To show you how badly I am with keeping up with the times, I had just had a nice hard reality check recently; a little reminder that now only was the next Kingdom Hearts game mere weeks away (less at the time of writing this now).
Needless to say, this brought back a heavy-handed dose of nostalgia flooding into my mind. Kingdom Hearts was not my first romp into RPGs nor my favorite (that honor is saved for something I will definitely write about later on), but it does hold a lot of space in my heart. I remember the first time I even seen the trailer for the game and fell in love with it all those years ago. To a preteen youth who loved both Final Fantasy and Disney growing up, it was something that I never realized I needed until it appeared before my eyes.
I couldn’t help myself as the memories flooded back and, being a sucker with more money than common sense, I bought the HD Collection of the entire series so far to binge on it nice and quick before the release of the long awaited Kingdom Hearts 3. I was beyond excited to relive one of the few moments of my youth I cherished growing up, the sense of awe and wonder filling me as the title screen appeared before me.
And then I started playing.
Boy, did I forget how damn frustrating this game was.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the game still and nothing will change that, but I will admit starting the first game over and playing it from the get-go reminded me of the few problems the game did have, in my honest opinion.
Take this with a grain of salt, though. I have always preferred turn-based RPGs more than action RPGs, so perhaps I am not the one to immediately take the side of when reading this. That being said, the biggest and most frustrating aspect of Kingdom Hearts is and was the platforming. Call me crazy because maybe it was a controller issue or just a problem with me being awful at platforming, but I spent a good 20 minutes just dealing with the frustrating jumping and the floaty camera in the Deep Jungle level (for real, fuck those hippos).
Putting that off to the side, though, the game also had some fairly rough-sounding voice-overs. It felt to me like some of the voice actors for the original characters and even some of the Final Fantasy characters felt uncomfortable, like it took them a bit to truly get comfortable with their roles. This shouldn’t be seen as a major criticism, though, as much of the dubbing was spot on and even the shaky vocals felt more natural as the game progressed.
The final small complaint I have after replaying my childhood is, again, fairly trivial. A nitpick, if you will, as again I am a turn-based RPG player, but the combat in the early game felt stiff to me. From a story standpoint, though, it makes sense to me, as Sora is more-or-less a novice at combat and has to grow into his skill and power, so this was a mainly minor complaint, especially as the game progressed and Sora’s Abilities and capabilities grew.
So, I committed a bit of a sin with this post as I talk smack about a beloved favorite of an enormous population of gamers. How dare I do that, I hear people say as they light their torches and sharpen their pitchforks, the whole time forgetting that I said that this was also a huge part of my childhood as well.
Kingdom Hearts did and still does have its’ problems, but that shouldn’t change the impact it had on all of us fans as we grew up with it. The frustrating platforming doesn’t ruin those opening moments after the first cinematic. The tiny combat issues doesn’t negate the adrenaline rush we felt as we barely scraped by a boss battle to tear victory away at the last second. The 90’s voice acting does not ruin the bittersweet reunion between Sora and Kairi as they are only to be torn apart again before the end of it all.
Kingdom Hearts has problems, but all work of art does and Kingdom Hearts is exactly that: a work of art.
So, I guess the point of this post is not to smack a modern classic around silly with my obnoxiously over-the-top life-sized replica of my Keyblade I have because I am a weeb like the rest of the fan base. The point is more to remind myself and anyone else who made it this far that just because something we love has flaws, doesn’t make it awful and doesn’t mean we should stop loving it. I definitely won’t stop.
Game on, gamers.
-Vox Ludio
VoxLudioGAME 