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Jan 15th, 2008 at 01:29:56 - Kingdom Hearts (PS2) |
Gameplay
So far the game has done well with the difficulty of the game, with its gradual increase in difficulty as the game progresses. One problem may be that at some parts of the game, specifically Agrabah, seem to have boss battles of a difficulty slightly higher than what could be considered accurate for the world, and in the aforementioned world, the enemies have a higher chance of killing you off before you can properly procede with the story. I found that the Cave of Wonders boss battle, was a bit hectic, with the purpose being to attack both its eyes while being attacked by Heartless, normally in groups of five at a time.
Also, Donald appears to have some difficulty in staying alive, though that could be said of any mage-type character in Square's collection of RPG's. This said I found myself either healing him more than the rest of the party or running around the area during a boss battle, waiting for him to regain consciousness. For him to stay alive without my assistance I found that I had to set it to where he was always casting the two defensive magics, Heal and Aero.
I found that the Goofy and I could be managed fine without the use of equipment given the area, but if I wanted to keep him alive, Donald would have to wear some defense boosting equipment. Aside from accesories, I found that I could manage perfectly with the starting weapons of each character. The new weapons acquired in the different worlds did little to help with my stats due to the use of Power, Defense, and AP Ups i stocked up to this point, though i know later i will surely need to up my weapons due to a shortage of these enhancing items.
Design
Aside from the main story, I found that many of the extras added an enjoyable experience to the game and added to he replayability, mostly of the same game file. Some of these, such as rescuing all ninty-nine dalmation pups from the classic movie by rescuing them from item chests (three per chest) reward your hard effort. The side-quest mentioned previously rewards you for making certain milestones such as finding ten, twenty, and so on with various items such as a rare ribbon accesory or a full set of gummy ship parts. Of course I still have yet to recieve these rewards but the other rewards are still worth obtaining. Another aspect item was the Trinity Marks, which allow you to gain items and other and other useful things by meeting certain criteria, mainly having Donald and Goofy in the party.
Some of the cutscenes were amazing and a majority of the story is told through them. For those who have already played the game, the inability to skip past them may be slightly annoying, especially in the beginning and end (laying the groundwork for the games story and ending the game without unintentional ambiguity), but do not disturb the gameplay too much throughout the rest of the game. Also i might add that the opening CG was quite remarkable and was very sybolic, forshadowing events that have and will happen during the game.
The game itself, I felt was very innovational.
Its replacement of random battles and the removal of a turn-based battle system give it the feel of an action game and gives the world amore realistic (or semi-realistic) feel. I partly believe that the success of this battle system and character customization for party members evolved into some of the features in Final Fantasy XII, with random battles being elimated and encouters being modified instead of the trap-like encounters in Kingdom Hearts. Also the character customization may have been a precursor to the Gambit system, a sort of prototype version so to speak.
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Jan 14th, 2008 at 21:40:30 - Kingdom Hearts (PS2) |
Summary
In Kingdom Hearts action-rpg in which you control Sora, a boy whose world was destroyed by the dark creatures called the Heartless. With the aid of new friends and the mysterious Keyblade, Sora and his new friends must save the various worlds from being consumed by the Heartless while searching for his missing friends, his new friends’ king, and a way to destroy the Heartless and those controlling them.
Gameplay
An interesting thing to note about the character's of this game is that all of the secondary npc's that you encounter and that are necessary for story progression happen to be from the Final Fantasy games and Disney movies. Aside from the npc's that appear in Traverse Town, whom encounter is not necessary for much of anything aside from the occasional shopping for items, the main characters and enemies are all really well thought out and their personalities almost make them seem to be alive. The lack of background information on the main characters, whether it is because they hope to expand on that in a future release or not, doesn’t create a bond between you and the character like in many other games in this genre. In other words it doesn’t make the main character seem like a friend but more like an alternate version of you, where if you place all of the attention that would normally be placed on the character’s past and focused it on the personality. The Keyblade itself is a different matter. It is a relic surrounded in myth and treated almost as if it was a character itself. Since it changes form depending on what keychain it is equipped with and since most of them are give to you by friends you meet, it seems to connect the hearts of those you meet with your own.
I was easily engrossed in the game's storyline, which is surprisingly dark for a game that some assume to be for only children (something Disney is pretty well known for I guess). While it may be true that the game is pretty easy to pick up, learn, and play towards the beginning, the dark storyline is actually quite complex, something that older audiences may want to pay attention to when playing this game. To give an example of how dark and complex the storyline is, the Heartless are created from darkness, more specifically the darkness within people's hearts, and are created when a person is consumed by said darkness. But what's surprising is that the being is only able to become a Heartless if his heart is "taken" by other Heartless who "feed" on the darkness it contains which in turn results in the heart itself turning into a Heartless, and what's even more surprising is that this is most prevalent with "artificial" heartless. That is how the game states it but if you stop to think about this, it means the Heartless are literally tearing out a living person's heart, thereby killing the person in what would normally be an excruciatingly painful way. It also means that someone created more... Moving along, the story can be stated in a simple way as one full of love, deceit, betrayal, sadness, and hope (you know, the stuff that makes stories complicated). One of the main thoughts I had about this game, something that helped the story very well in my opinion, is the underlying theme of light and dark though I’m not sure if I can call it that, it’s pretty obvious.
Ok, the story is the main thing about this game that I love, but it wouldn’t have turned out the same as it did if it wasn’t for everything in the game such as the memorable main characters, the form the game play took, and other important aspects. Emotionally, I feel very close to the events within the game and felt many of the same emotions the main character did while I was playing the game, which may be the main reason I love it so much. About the only thing missing from this game was the lack of a cooperative mode of some sort, something that will most likely be fixed in a few of the games later releases.
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