Kingdom Hearts final mix review

Kingdom Hearts burst onto the Playstation 2 in 2002 and gamers everywhere loved it. Riding off the success of Final Fantasy 7, Square Soft made a deal with Disney to blend Disney and Final Fantasy assets together to create one of the most beloved gaming franchises to ever exist. This year Kingdom Hearts celebrates its 20th anniversary so I thought there is no better time to revisit the game that started it all.

Unlike most Kingdom Hearts fans, I didn’t grow up with the PS2 games. Instead I played all of them all the way up to KH3 last year. I picked up KH3 at release and was forced by a friend to not play it because “you won’t have a f****** clue what is going on” and oh boy were they right. So with that in mind I picked up the 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix for the PS4 and my long, long journey began.

I should probably mention I didn’t pay too much attention to Disney when they were fully into their princesses so I hadn’t and still haven’t watched any of the movies referenced in this game but I had enough knowledge to know who they were and which movie they were from. I also hadn’t played either Final Fantasy 7 or its remake. But that didn’t affect my enjoyment in the slightest.

The story of KH1 follows three kids who live in a world called Destiny Islands. The three kids were called Sora, Kairi, and Riku and they all shared the dream of leaving the islands and discovering what other worlds are out there, more specifically Kairi’s home world. But the night before they planned to set out, there was a storm. Sora went looking for his friends and found Riku alone. Riku reached out to Sora as he begins to fall into darkness but before Sora can reach him, there is a flash of light; Riku has disappeared and Sora now wields the Keyblade. With the Keyblade Sora can now fight off the forces of Darkness known as The Heartless. Sora found a dazed Kairi in their secret spot and as the world is swallowed by Darkness, Kairi falls through Sora and both of them are cast out of the world. Sora wakes up in a world known as Traverse Town and meets some Final Fantasy characters and teams up with Donald and Goofy who are looking for King Mickey. That, I feel, is where the story truly begins.

Square Soft did a fantastic job at bringing the Disney worlds to life. The Disney worlds in KH1 are from the movies: Alice in Wonderland, Hercules, Tarzan, Aladdin, Pinnochio, Nightmare before Christmas, The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan and honestly it isn’t that weird seeing Sora, Donald, and Goofy hanging out with Hercules at the coliseum. Our three heroes go through some physical changes in some of the worlds too so that they don’t stand out. Like in Atlantica, Sora gets a mermaid tail, Donald becomes an octopus and Goofy turns into a turtle. This decision only deepens the immersion; it feels like they could pop up in any of the movies and it wouldn’t feel out of place. The Disney worlds all follow the story of their respective movies with some minor changes to accommodate for the overarching story of Kingdom Hearts.

While I appreciate that the Final Mix version is a faithful remake, there are a few things I feel they should’ve changed. Most importantly, the camera. The camera in KH1 is straight garbage. It gets stuck on walls all the time, it moves very slidey, and when it does find Sora’s back it is too far down for decent visibility. I’m a vision impaired gamer. I have a hard enough time seeing things in general without the camera acting like a caveman playing with sparklers. And don’t even get me started on Donald and Goofy. It’s a running joke in the KH community that Donald sucks and he should be replaced immediately, but I didn’t mind Donald as an ally. His focus on magic balanced well with my overall general strategy of get in there and hit it to death. What really bothered me was how close they would hang around Sora. Every time I just wanted to stop and get my bearings, both Donald and Goofy closed in on Sora, blocking the camera from multiple angles. I can’t tell you how many times I died to an enemy being hidden by my supposed friends.

KH1 also had a problem with platforming. Platforming in any PS2 game just sucks but it gets a lot worse when a PS2 game gets updated for 60 frames per second. This ended up causing quite a few problems, like the timing for any button input. When trying to deflect projectiles you have to press the button well before it reaches you otherwise the frame rate forces you to take the hit, and with the platforming sections it is very very hard to do some of the jumps when the frame rate won’t let you jump from the edge. Luckily an ability makes platforming a breeze, but you won’t get it until the end of the game.

Overall Kingdom Hearts was a delight. I loved how all the characters interacted with each other in a way that was so natural. If you’re on the fence about diving into this rabbit hole, my advice would be play this one first. It does a fantastic job of setting up this amazing franchise known as Kingdom Hearts.

-Apollo-