Kingdom Hearts

 

Kingdom Hearts is an ambitious crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy that, ironically, is at its best when it’s not covering either brand, but being its own weird thing.

The protagonist is a boy named Sora,  who lives on an island and dreams of traveling with his friends, Kairi and Riku, to discover new places. One day, they start to build a raft to go sailing, but before they are able to depart, their homeworld is engulfed in shadows and, after a battle against a monster, Sora wakes up in another world. There, he meets Donald and Goofy, who are looking for a key that is supposed to help their king, Mickey Mouse.

The game begins with an uncanny atmosphere. It asks some personal, abstract questions with no expressed purpose, exposing your answers in a direct, but eerie manner (“You want friendship. You’re afraid of getting old”). And it starts to build mysteries right away:  “You are the one who will open the door,” a voice says to Sora, coming out of nowhere, without explaining its purpose or intent. Even Sora’s own home doesn’t feel like a home, having this dreamlike feeling to it: the place is called Destiny Islands, and only kids appear to live there, as no adults ever show up – there is only one scene in which an adult’s voice can be heard, but the person, of course, remains off-camera. Sora is always talking about Kairi and Riku, too, but never once mentions his parents. The boy traveling to other worlds and meeting Disney characters, then, doesn’t feel far-fetched in that universe, as the boy’s own home was already strange enough to begin with.

Sora will make many more friends in his quest to save Kairi and Riku. Kingdom Hearts is primarily about friendship, with the protagonist’s own strength arising from the people he meets and helps along the way:  “I don’t need a weapon. My friends are my power,” he states during a climactic scene. But the story also talks about the ambivalence of human nature, showing that a person’s heart can be home both to light and darkness alike, no matter who they are.

That is why it’s great to have Sora’s longtime friend and rival, Riku, become an antagonist in the game, being manipulated by evil forces. Both Sora and Riku share the same goal – to save Kairi – but they take opposite paths to reach it. While Riku becomes bitter and jealous of his friend and has his heart aligned with darkness in the process, Sora remains cheerful until the end and even smiles before making a huge personal sacrifice. He refuses to use people to achieve his goal, choosing instead to always try to find ways to assist those around him. If Sora is helping someone, Sora is happy. In Kingdom Hearts, Riku and Sora are both sides of the same coin, which doesn’t mean that Riku is evil – far from it – he just lets himself be persuaded by its alluring force. As the villain says: “I believe darkness sleeps in every heart, no matter how pure. Given the chance, the smallest drop can spread and swallow the heart.”

It’s also great that the big villain in the story is not a one-dimensional bad guy. His journals reveal that he was once a kind man who, precisely like Riku, allowed himself to be seduced by darkness. He even shared the same dreams as the protagonist and his friend, stating that he felt caged and needed to explore other places and meet new faces (“My people and I are all but prisoners of this tiny place,” he writes). Kingdom Hearts’ story shows that no one is born good or evil, but is led to a certain path by what happens to them and by the influence of those that remain at their side.

It’s easy, when writing about Kingdom Hearts, to forget about the elements that are drawn from Disney franchises and Final Fantasy. After all, what exactly do the Disney worlds add to these themes? The sad fact is their contribution to the story is minimal, which marks the biggest drawback of the game’s narrative. The stories of the Disney movies, like Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Tarzan are all self-contained and barely relate to Sora’s main quest. He must find and seal a keyhole in every world while its respective movie villain tries to open it, but that’s it. If instead of meeting Tarzan and exploring his jungle, Sora had met the Guardians of the Galaxy and traveled through space nothing in his character arc would have changed. This disconnection between the Disney stories and the main narrative leads to a sluggish pace, since most of the things that happen inside those worlds – like fighting Jafar, befriending Ariel, and helping Jack  – don’t really matter to the overarching story. Collectively, of course, they form Sora’s journey, showing him getting stronger as he befriends and assists more people but, individually, they are irrelevant. It’s also a bit disappointing that, while Disney gets a bunch of worlds, Final Fantasy is relegated to just some glorified cameos.

The writing, however, can be praised for being faithful to the original material, even when it’s a difficult one, like Alice in Wonderland. Alice, for example, still plays with words here, and at one point she says: “I should like to keep my head. Why, if my head and body become separated, nothing I eat will ever reach my stomach.” However, the decision to put her world as the first one that Sora visits with Donald and Goofy is a bit questionable, as its design is purposefully confusing and disorienting.

The game also suffers from some clunky platforming, an unstable camera, and atrocious on-rails segments: Sora doesn’t automatically travel from world to world but flies to them in a ship made of blocks. These stages overstay their welcome very fast, being visually dull and overly easy and repetitive. After all, it doesn’t take long to discover that we only need to put additional weapons to our customizable ship to make it virtually indestructible.

The main combat, although very simple, is fine. It’s in real-time, but Sora has only one action button, which can be used to select the attack, magic, and item options. However, because there are some button shortcuts to use magic, the battles can become very fast and dynamic. With a dodge roll and a button dedicated to skills, which are acquired by leveling up, some battles can be pretty intense, requiring constant movement and healing.

The level design is also simple, with a lot of rooms separated by loading screens. The player is encouraged to return to previous worlds to explore them again with the new skills acquired, but the rewards are not always worth it: most of the time, we will find only more parts to customize our ship. In other words, the main issue here is that exploration is tied to the game’s worst section.

It’s also irritating that one of the ways of getting secret items is using a skill called “trinity”, which requires Donald and Goofy to be in our party. Since most worlds have a special character, like Alladin or Ariel as an optional party member, experimenting with them ends up being discouraged.  After all, having to switch party members – which can only be done at a save spot – becomes tiresome after the seventh trinity mark.

Kingdom Hearts has its heart in the right place, but for it to grow and become truly great, the series must pay more attention to the individual stories it tells, making them more relevant, and correct some of its more bizarre design decisions.

December 12, 2024.