Sequelitis- when some greedy old executives decide they don't have enough money, so they take a work that is much beloved and make a sequel to it. Ah, but is the sequel as good as the original? Heck no, but it made money, didn't it? Today, I want to look at a game that was very original, very groundbreaking when it came out, and then got a sequel that was none of those things. And then got another sequel. And another. And another... This is Kingdom Hearts.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Back in 2002, there was a LOT of excitement for this game. And why shouldn't there have been? After all, it was a mix between the (at the time) biggest name in gaming AND the biggest name in animation: Squaresoft and Disney. It was Final Fantasy and the Disney Animated Canon! Old School Disney! Modern Disney! Final Fantasy! Together! There was going to be a The Little Mermaid World, with Ariel! An Aladdin world, with the Genie! Alice in Wonderland! Tarzan! Peter Pan! Final Fantasy 7! Beauty and the Beast! Holy hell, were people excited!
It was Christmas of 2002 when I got this game. I woke up at 5 AM just to play it. I remember how excited I was. If I recall, that was the last time I had ever done that. I remember putting in that bad boy on my PS2, playing the game for three hours straight before getting breakfast at last, helping my little bro set up his new basketball hoop, and then playing some more. I remember I had outright refused ALL spoilers, I wanted to be surprised. And boy, was I ever. I remember my jaw dropping when I summoned Simba for the first time. I remember the fun I had summoning Dumbo or Mushu. I remember the massive geek out I had when Cloud first spoke, or when Squall first appeared (I did not expect Squall to be in the game).
Oh, wait, the story. Alright, so in Kingdom Hearts, we have this boy, called Sora, who lives in a group of islands called Destiny Islands with his friends, Riku, Kairi, Tidus, Wakka (yes, from Final Fantasy 10) and Selphie (from Final Fantasy 8), Sora, Riku, and Kairi wish to leave the islands and see what's out there, beyond the ocean. One night, during a storm, black shadow creatures invade the Islands. While Sora looks for his friends, he is swarmed by the creatures. Suddenly, he is holding a strange weapon: an over sized key that acts like a sword, the Keyblade.
Sora, with Keyblade on hand
After fighting off the shadows, called Heartless, Sora is transported into a new world, named Traverse Town. In this town, he meets the two allies that will accompany him on his journey to find his friends: Donald and Goofy. Yes, from Disney.
Together, they battle the Heartless, tirelessly searching for Riku and Kairi. They eventually uncover a plot: The witch Maleficent (yes, from Sleeping Beauty) is planning on controlling the Heartless to gain their dark powers. To achieve this end, she has recruited several allies, including Captain Hook, Ursula from The Little Mermaid, and Jafar from Aladdin.
After defeating the Disney Villains, the game throws you a curve ball: the real bad guy is an original character named Xehanort Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness. After some awesome battles, including a very memorable one against Chernabog from Fantasia, Sora, Donald, and Goofy defeat Ansem, putting an end to the Heartless (for now) and saving the Universe from Darkness. However, now the trio is stuck in another world...
Kingdom Heart's success is one that defies logic. The characters are, save for Sora and Riku, two dimensional at best. The plot reads like a fan fic written by a Disney and Squaresoft fan girl. Yet, that did not stop the game from being fantastic. The game play was solid, the voice acting was top notch (well duh, this IS Disney), the music was fantastic, and the graphics were cartoonishly charming.
However, the game had its flaws. The mixture between Final Fantasy was uneven, and that's putting it mildly. There were 10 characters from Final Fantasy to appear in the game. And they were: Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, Squall, Yuffie, Aeris, Cloud, Cid Highwind, Sephiroth, and moogles. Cid didn't get a voice actor, and Sephiroth had no bearing to the plot at all, being little more than a bonus boss (a hard, fun one, but still). What made me excited for Kingdom Hearts, I will admit, was seeing these characters in 3D, with speaking roles. I'll admit, I wished back then their roles were larger.
And yet, the Disney elements were what made Kingdom Hearts such a stand out title. You KNEW these characters already, because they made your childhoods. You knew Simba, Mushu, Aladdin, Alice, Hercules, Ariel, the Beast, Snow White, Cinderella, and so forth. And there they were, in a Squaresoft game!
Kingdom Hearts was a niche title, and yet it sold. It sold specifically because no one had seen a game like it before. It sold because the game itself was terrific, action packed, and beautiful to look at. Hell, it still is! That's why people clamored for a sequel, which they got in 2004!
Be careful what you wish for, though.
Chain of Memories was the first sequel to Kingdom Hearts. Released in the year 2004 on the Gameboy Advance-
One second, let me rant here. A sequel to a game on the Playstation 2, which continues the story set by the PS2 game, was released on an unrelated, hand held system made by a rival company. How is this logical!? Square-Enix (Squaresoft had merged with Enix by then), what the hell!? What, did you assume I would already own a Game Boy Advance by then!? (The fact that I did is unrelated) Why do I need a Game Boy Advance to play a game that's a sequel to a Playstation 2 game!?
The worst part is that CoM is 90% a rehash of the first Kingdom Hearts (minus the Tarzan world) and 10% new material. Although Sora grows as a character, and he gains new enemies, I need to say this: what made the original Kingdom Hearts so good was gone from Chain of Memories. The Disney elements felt far too tacked on, with the exceptions of Donald, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket (who actually got something to do this game, unlike last time) and Mickey Mouse. And the Final Fantasy characters? No Sephiroth, and besides the Moogles, every other Final Fantasy character from the first game gets a cameo, at best. Squall's appearance is a tutorial, the rest get some dialogue, but apart from that? No role of substance. Moogles act as vendors, so that's something.
Chain of Memories was re released in the year 2008 for the Playstation 2 with PS2 quality graphics, sound, and some extras. Basically, Square Enix released a four year old game on an eight year old system, that served as a prequel to a game that was two years old already, at a time where Sony should have been hungry for games to release on their brand new system, the Playstation 3. Oh, and during that exact same year, Square Enix was releasing another sequel to Kingdom Hearts, that also acted as a sequel to Chain or Memories but acted as a prequel to the third game...on the Nintendo DS.
What!? Why!? They had the technology for a release on the Playstation 2! They already had a fan base on the Playstation 2! Most gamers that loved Kingdom Hearts ALREADY owned a Playstation 2! It stands to reason, then, that the sequels to Kingdom Hearts SHOULD be released on the Playstation 2! Ah! But no! They just HAD to release the games across several platforms!
This wouldn't be so bad, admittedly, if the handheld games were stories that were set in the same Universe, but otherwise had nothing to do with the original story. And honestly, I think Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 358 days over 2 pull this off, one way or another. But the thing is, Square Enix and Buena Vista Games (the other company that helps make these games, the Disney half) keep releasing the games on handhelds.
To play the entire series and understand the story, I need: a Playstation 2 to play three of the games, a Nintendo DS to play 358 Days, a Playstation Portable to play Birth by Sleep, a Nintendo 3DS to play Dream Drop Distance, AND a PS3 to play Kingdom Hearts 3. Why!?
The sequels do add to the story, to be fair. Yeah, by adding on more and more content, raising five questions for every 1 that they answer! Take Chain of Memories, for example. The original left one question unanswered: Where was Mikey? And Chain of Memories answered...and asked five more questions: What's this Organization? What are Nobodies? Who's DiZ? What does the Organization want with Sora? What the hell is this 'Twilight Town'? And a few more.
Kingdom Hearts 2 was released in 2006. Yes, it is the third game in the series, yet it is called Kingdom Hearts 2. This game is more action packed than the original, with more skills, abilities, new worlds, improved mechanics, mini games, less side quests, and so forth. However, all that came at a price.
Kingdom Hearts 2 started slow. And when I say slow, I mean snail's pace slow. The tutorial itself is laden with several un-skippable cutscenes, which takes about 2 to three hours of game time. Let me repeat myself: the tutorial takes two to three hours, with cutscenes you can not skip. And after the tutorial? Well, another hour or two of gameplay that demands you keep on meandering about this one world named Hollow Bastion, where you get to meet some Final Fantasy characters, fight some Heartless, and so forth. After five (!!!!!) hours of gameplay, you finally get to go to your first Disney world, based on Mulan...
...and that world has no bearing, at all, to the plot of the game! Seriously, it's all a bunch of mindless meandering that summarizes in an hour and a half of gameplay a movie from 1998! Seriously, it felt too much like a deleted scene from the original game that somehow, for SOME reason, got tacked onto the third game of the franchise! And guess what? This isn't the only world to do that!
The main plot of the game is that Sora now has to face the Organization 13, an organization of Nobodies (basically bodies that lack hearts but have sentience. Don't ask, it makes sense in context) that want to take Kingdom Hearts, which is where all hearts lay, and then get hearts...Yeah. I didn't understand it very well either.
There was also this side plot with Maleficent, who was resurrected by...being remembered? I don't know, it's not made clear. Anyway, she's up to her old tricks again, trying to re take the powers of darkness once more. But honestly? This side plot goes nowhere. It doesn't intersect much with the main plot, there's no pay off, and honestly, half the time it felt like some way to justify half the Disney Worlds that were included. A shame, really.
Of the Disney Worlds that were included in the game, only a handful had any real bearing to the plot. The Pirates of the Caribbean world, the Tron world, the Hercules world, and the Beauty and the Beast world. The others (Lion King, Nightmare before Christmas, Mulan, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Steamboat Willy) had little to do with the main plot, even if the Steamboat Willy world helped further the Maleficent plot. Donald and Goofy got some good parts here or there, but otherwise, felt more like they were there for the sake of being there. In short, the majority of the Disney elements felt like they were tacked on, not integrated.
Part of what made Kingdom Hearts 1 so memorable was the integration of the Disney elements with the Final Fantasy ones, like a fan fic written by a Disney and Final Fantasy fan girl. Kingdon Hearts 2 felt like that fan girl decided that what her original fan fic needed was more original characters, and in the process grew so enamored with them that she decided to focus more on these characters while disregarding the canon ones.
That's kind of what Kingdom Hearts is, when all is said and done. It's a fan fic, written by a fan boy (in this case, a pair of them) who had the resources to make the game commercially available. Now, I am not saying the game (or games) are bad, far from it. Kingdom Hearts, game play wise, is an exciting romp, one you'll be playing for hours on end without getting bored. The story, however, is not that great. In fact, it could stand for improvements.
I love the original game, I have many, many fond memories of it. Do I wish the sequels were different? Yes I do. Do I believe that the series could be handled better? You better believe it. Do I wish the original game had been little more than a stand alone title? Well, yes and no. Yes in the way that, had it been such a thing, Kingdom Hearts would have been remembered as that great game that re defined the RPG genre and blew open the door for the Action RPG. But I recognize that, considering how great the first game was, and how much it sold, a sequel would have been inevitable. So in a lot of ways, I am glad that stand alone title took the chance and had it paid off. I am glad they made a series. But that does not mean I like how it went.
However, I recognize that, for all its flaws, the series has a loyal, dedicated fan base. And honestly, how can I look those people in the eye and tell them the games they love are bad and should not be made? The story is bad, in my opinion. But I recognize that there are people that love the story. I recognize that there are people that are eagerly waiting for Kingdom Hearts 3 (yes, the eight game in the series will be called that.) Me? I'm burnt out with the series. I don't have a Nintendo DS, 3DS, or Playstation Portable, so that's three titles I've missed out on. And honestly, I feel like I've moved on from Kingdom Hearts.
In the end, however, it doesn't matter if I like them or if any of the critics, be they online or in media, like the games. What matters is that the people that play the games enjoy the games, because when a work resonates with the individual, when a work means SOMETHING to someone other than the creator, that's when you know you've made good art.
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