If you're a gamer, anime fan, a Disney fan or Asian you have already played Kingdom Hearts roughly 30 times. For the rest of you, you have not only missed out on one of the best Square Enix franchises, but you have missed out on quite possibly the best universe crossover in history. To celebrate the first games upcoming 10th anniversary and the announcement of the 3rd main title, Square are re-releasing all the Kingdom Hearts games in two PS3 exclusive HD re-masterings, the first offering is KHHD1.5ReMIX. The collection contains a ground up remake of the previously Japan exclusive 'Final Mix' of Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories and full 3D cutscenes telling the story of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days.
Kingdom Hearts, originally released in 2004 for the PS2, is one of the platforms best exclusive titles. You play as Sora, a young boy who lives on the beautiful Destiny Islands with his best friends Riku and Kairi. The trio seek what many youngsters do, to adventure beyond their home in search of other worlds, to meet new people and have adventures to tell their children about. As the three friends prepare to leave the Islands in search for these other worlds a huge electrical storm engulfs their home and creatures made of shadow that haunt Sora's dreams begin to pour out from the storm. Sora is granted power of a powerful weapon known as the Keyblade in order to combat these foes, however he is too late and his world is destroyed by these dark beings known as the Heartless.
In another world magician Donald Duck & captain of the guard Goofy are given a task by the missing King Mickey to find the wielder of the Keyblade and to assist them in sealing the keyholes to worlds that being attacked by the Heartless.
As Donald and Goofy find Sora and begin to seal the keyholes they soon learn of a sinister pact lead by the evil witch Maleficent (of Sleeping Beauty fame) to try to control the darkness and become the leader of the Heartless by collecting the 'Princesses of Heart' (the Disney Princesses and one significant other), however another familiar face has their own plans for controlling the Heartless.
Kingdom Hearts is the ultimate crossover of Final Fantasy and Disney. Bringing characters such as Leon, Sephiroth, Cloud, Yufi and several others alongside characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and more. You will explore worlds from films such as Hercules, Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleeping Beauty & Tarzan all whilst having a rich JRPG experience with real time combat mechanics instead of that silly turn based crap Final Fantasy has been using since the dark ages.
KH offers extensive customisation of how you play the game, from people who prefer the more western approach of simple melee combos mixed in with a bit of magic all the way to the hardcore JRPG fans with game changing options in terms of hotkeys, magic combos, character item customisation and party management. KH manages to cater to many different playstyles and abilities, from someone’s very first RPG to the biggest FF fan trying out Squares newest franchise.
Levels in Kingdom Hearts very much boil down to a simple repetitive task; battle through the areas to the end of the level, backtrack a little, fight a couple of bosses and then finish the level by sealing the worlds keyhole after a very tough final boss.
Though this is repetitive each level has a distinct feel to it (particularly that god damn Little Mermaid level) which stops it from becoming stale too early in its story.
KH is a pretty long game too, a straight run will take you anywhere between 12-15 hours, pile on top any exploration, grinding to beat a boss and general confusion due to sometimes unclear objectives and you could be looking at upwards of 20 hours.
As for the difficulty, Kingdom Hearts is, for a game that at first glance looks a lot like a kids game, incredibly difficult. The game begins with a couple of difficult levels before taking a bit of a lull in the middle and picking up sharply at the end again, providing some real tear your hair out frustrating moments, but some real liberating moments of success when you finally beat that boss after a good 7 or 8 attempts.
Kingdom Hearts, is for a game that's getting on for a decade old, very good looking. Character models are a little jaggy here and there but in terms of overall visual standard the HD remake is superb. Environments are bright, colourful, interestingly designed and highly detailed, not to mention watching that opening CGI cinematic in full 1080p is simply jaw dropping and makes you cry from the nostalgia.
The interesting thing about KH: Final Mix in this HD collection though is that Square Enix famously lost all the game files to the original game. Therefore KHHD: Final Mix had to be reverse developed from the ground up making not only making the game playable on the PS3 difficult but making it look as good as it does is an incredible feat.
The voice actors have all returned to re-record audio besides the voice actor for Sora (understandable due to puberty and all) and every single one of them, even the new Sora voice actor give top dollar performance.
If I could have one complaint about the audio/visual presentation, its more to do with the lines the non-Disney characters say, they all seem awkward and poorly written, the voice actors did their best to try to not make this seem true but some things are just impossible and whoever wrote the dialogue for the KH & FF characters should be forced to listen to their shoddy workmanship for the rest of their life.
In conclusion, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX's version of Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix is, if you are a fan of the series, worthy of a purchase due to the nostalgia, gorgeous visual upgrade and full trophy support. If you have not yet played the games, you should pick the collection up and give them a go if you like RPG games, it may help to have a bit of knowledge of Final Fantasy (in particular VII) before playing though as then you'll be able to identify the FF characters better and understand what they mean when they reference the FF games. However if the KH series has never appealed to you then this wont convince you otherwise and I doubt anything ever will.
Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX - Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix – 8/10
+KH Nostalgia
+Looks Beautiful
-Shoddy Dialogue
-Atlantica Level
