Kingdom Hearts Final Mix

Heartless of Darkness

The idea for Disney and Square-Enix’s (formerly Squaresoft’s) crossover Kingdom Hearts franchise began with a meeting in an elevator between executives from both companies, resulting in the first entry for the PlayStation 2 seeing release in Japan and overseas to commercial and critical success. The game would receive a sequel at the end of the PS2’s lifespan, before which was an interquel game, Chain of Memories, released initially on the GameBoy Advance and later remade for the system as part of the sequel’s “Final Mix” version as Re:Chain of Memories, released standalone in North America.

During the PlayStation 3 era, Square-Enix would release high-definition collections of the games, which gave North American gamers access to the exclusive added content of the Final Mix versions initially confined to Japan. They would later port these HD collections to the PlayStation 4, and collect all games and cutscenes from some of the gaidens as The Story So Far in anticipation of the development hell-plagued third entry for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Does the latest iteration of the first game’s international version, Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, still hold up today, along with its accompanying crossover formula?

The first game opens with a cutscene about spiky-haired protagonist Sora having “weird” thoughts of falling through water, following which is a dream sequence that determines combat capability and stat advancement. He lives on Destiny Islands with his love interest Kairi and Final Fantasy characters Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie, and while Rikku doesn’t show up, the writers took her name, shaved off a ‘k’, and tagged it onto Sora’s at first-friendly rival Riku, with whom the spike-haired hero “keeps score.” Destiny Islands eventually succumbs to creatures known as the Heartless and the darkness itself, Sora becoming master of a blunt key-shaped weapon known as the Keyblade.

Meanwhile, Donald Duck and Goofy find King Mickey to be missing, and thus begin a search across various Disney-themed (and on occasional original) worlds in search of him, with Sora simultaneously seeking Kairi, although these goals don’t seem terribly urgent, and many areas rehash the stories of Disney’s animated films, with the Heartless worked in somehow. Crossovers rarely make for great storytelling, especially when they expect audiences to take them seriously, and the humor that makes most Disney features bearable for older audiences is virtually nonexistent, the scenario writers seeming to only keep kids in mind.

The narrative is also horrendously derivative. The ideas of the battle between light and dark, and “the chosen one” stem from Star Wars, and the principle of not “meddling” in the affairs of other worlds (which Sora, Donald and Goofy routinely violate), echoes the Prime Directive of Star Trek. The themes of hearts and darkness seem as well to come from the Care Bears mythos, and the ideals of the power of love and friendship, friends-turned-rivals, and such, derive from other RPGs, with the Final Fantasy characters not helping, their appearance serving little purpose other than fanservice.

Sadly, the story isn’t bad in an enjoyable way, but rather in an excruciating fashion, and can actually make the game somewhat embarrassing to play for adults. That isn’t to say that there aren’t any redeeming aspects in the narrative, since the base mythos, stemming from collectable Ansem Reports, is generally okay, and the ending is satisfying whilst leaving room for sequels and spinoffs. The game’s attempt to weave a serious narrative with cartoon characters largely involved is what chiefly hurts it, with Kingdom Hearts more following the Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue school of crossovers than the Roger Rabbit school.

The localization is definitely an admirable effort, given the general lack of spelling and grammar errors (with maybe one misused punctuation mark) and that the Disney characters have fitting dialogue, but does have its blemishes such as the failed attempts at many points to match lips with spoken text, oftentimes resulting in kaiju film-esque lip-flapping. The game is also full of cliched dialogue about hearts, light, and darkness, and the translation team could have made an effort to actually localize the Japanese names of the original characters, given their lack of visible Asian heritage and things like there already being a Square-Enix character named Rikku.

Thankfully, the gameplay somewhat redeems what issues the story has, with Sora able to hack away at the enemy with the various Keyblades he acquires throughout his quest, and combat combining menu-based and real-time elements. Selecting the “Attack” command on the battle menu on the lower left of the screen executes his standard assaults, the player able to string combos against Heartless that special skills that require a certain amount of finite Ability Points (AP) to equip can lengthen. Other AP abilities include dodge roll, which can actually be useful, and a guard option, which unfortunately requires timing and is generally not critical to success.

Sora can also cast magic that acquires occasional upgrades throughout his adventure, the player able to assign three to shortcuts for easier access, although one more slot akin to the first numbered sequel would have been nice, as would have been the ability to assign items to said shortcuts, since going through the battle menu doesn’t pause the action of combat. Some have likened combat in Kingdom Hearts to the active-time battles of the Final Fantasy series, and thus, a “Wait” option that halted the action during battle while navigating the menu or changing enemy targets would have helped.

Combat can emphasize button-mashing, but one improvement over the original is that special attacks that in the initial incarnation would have required quick menu navigation are now accessible through use of the triangle button. Increasing the button mashing, though, is that defeating a Heartless doesn’t automatically adjust targeting, with the player needing to retarget an enemy, which can spoil the flow of battle. The camera can also be a nuisance at times, especially when close to walls, and Sora’s AI-controlled allies may occasional do artificially-stupid things such as attacking petrified enemies.

Manual control of Sora’s allies would have been welcome, as well (and perhaps a multiplayer feature), and I highly recommend adjusting their settings so that they don’t constantly squander magic points and items, although luckily, when they lose all HP, standard healing brings them back into the action of battle. Sora also continually bounces around whilst attacking, and this sometimes doesn’t mesh well with the platform-laden dungeon design, with careless moves resulting in the need to retrace progress through levels. Regardless, the gameplay is generally fun, and younger players will appreciate the more forgiving nature of Beginner mode than in prior versions of the game.

Control, however, has more issues, such as the poor direction at times on how to advance the central storyline, especially early on in the game when players could waste time endlessly wandering finding out exactly how to move forward. Maps of areas would have been nice, as well, and platforming, as mentioned, sometimes doesn’t mesh well with combat. Moreover, sure to alienate hearing-impaired gamers is that most cutscene text is unskippable, although players can fully skip the scenes themselves. Some of the minigames, however, such as the gummi ship levels necessary to visit new worlds, are somewhat enjoyable, and in the end, interaction isn’t as bad as it could have been.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of the original game is its aural presentation, with a central theme in the form of “Simple and Clean,” which has a few remixes throughout the quest, although the lyrics are somewhat asinine. The title screen theme, “Dearly Beloved,” and its remixes, are also superb, and most worlds have their own music, not to mention their own battle themes, solving the typical JRPG problem of repetitive combat music. Yoko Shimomura’s soundtrack overall is excellent, as are her non-vocal remixes of some themes native to the Disney films. The voice performances are also good, with the various Disney characters sounding as they should, although characters such as Donald and Goofy create a tonal dissonance with the game’s serious plot, and I actually found myself playing with headphones.

The visuals also have many things going for them, with the original game adopting a graphical style that’s neither fully realistic nor fully cartoony, and the CG animated cutscenes that pop up occasionally look superb, as is expectant of a game of the current generation. The character models more or less resemble character designer Tetsuya Nomura’s designs, and contain appropriate anatomy. The colors are generally pleasing, although many environments have blurry, pixilated textures when seen close-up, and there is plenty of pop-up during the gummi ship sequences. There’s also occasional poor collision detection between models and objects at times, but the graphics are definitely passable.

Finally, a playthrough of the game can take as little as twelve hours when viewing all the cutscenes, although skipping them can potentially lower playtime to nine hours, and given the game’s length, alongside things such as the different playstyles formulated when starting a new game, alongside things such as trophies, side content, and so forth, there is plenty of lasting appeal, although a New Game+ would have definitely been welcome.

Overall, Kingdom Hearts Final Mix definitely has some remarkable aspects, such as the often-enjoyable nature of Keyblade combat, the superb aural presentation, and plentiful lasting appeal, although it does have some serious issues with things such as the combat and camera not meshing well at points with the dungeon design, the inconsistent graphical quality, and especially its infantile storyline and writing. The accommodating nature of the Beginner difficulty setting, however, is sure to appeal to younger audiences seeking a diving board into the Japanese RPG genre, and I would definitely recommend the game to said players.

This review is based on a playthrough of the version included with Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far on Beginner Mode.

The Good:
+Keyblade combat can be fun.
+Superb sound.
+Plentiful lasting appeal.

The Bad:
-Combat and camera sometimes don’t mesh well with level design.
-Infantile story and writing.
-Inconsistent graphical quality.

The Bottom Line:
A great JRPG for kids; for adults, not so much.

Score Breakdown:
Platform: PlayStation 4
Game Mechanics: 6.5/10
Controls: 5.0/10
Story: 1.0/10
Localization: 5.0/10
Music/Sound: 9.0/10
Graphics: 6.5/10
Lasting Appeal: 9.5/10
Difficulty: Adjustable
Playing Time: 9-18 Hours

Overall: 6.0/10