Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix (2013)

The kingdom hearts games are a series that somehow always evaded me, even though i'm an RPG player in heart, the Disney vide was never really appealing to me before.

Recently i decided to give them a chance, and started my adventure with KH1(.5) - the remastered version.

Let me first off state that the game feels very dated in certain regards, such as the camera work (even when locking enemies), the monster ai (sometimes they go to places where you just fall down half a level for attacking them, or sit inside doorways to other areas etc). However, this is a fairly old game, even in the remix version, and i don't think it'd therefore be fair to judge the game in that regard, even when it can be frustrating at times while playing through the game in the modern day.

The other aspects of the game are all phenomenal, and dit age pretty well too. The story starts off a bit shallow, but goes somewhat deeper near the end of the game, in what i assume is setting up a darker mainline story throughout the rest of the games.

I enjoyed most of the worlds, even though i didn't care much for some of the Disney stories (mainly the Atlantica and Agrabah worlds), some others where really fun to play through, and the last few worlds in the game are really phenomenal.

The combat in the game is very simplistic, where most of the game you are beating things by (auto)combo-ing with your weapon. The latter part of the game becomes very easy when you obtain certain spells, which, at least on final mix difficulty, made the endbosses feel way too easy too, a bit of a shame in that regard. With the amount of monsters that spawn in every single area (which was my main gripe with the game) that can eventually become a bit of a slog.

I haven't fully completed the post-game yet (i did some of it, plan to return there later to clean all of that up), but all in all, playing through the main part of the game, i feel it was overall an enjoyable experience, and i'm excited to start the next game in the series (chain of memories).

This was one of those games I always meant to play, but never did. Lots of my friends have fond memories of playing the original PS2 game growing up. I tried a couple times to get into it, but I could never get past Traverse Town. The last time I played this was over 10 years ago on the PS2 with an ex-boyfriend, but we didn't get that far (although I did get a stuffed Papau Fruit for Valentine's Day - true story). Life went on, and then this game went on to the Eternal Backlog™ and that was that.

Until one day Sora was announced for Smash! And then Kingdom Hearts was announced for Switch (yay!) as streaming only (boo!). I wrote an angry letter to Square and then decided to get this on the PS4 so I could play this on my husband's PS5. Can you believe the whole collection (including KH3?) was only $35? I heard it goes even lower than that, but I'll take that price. Yoink! And so here we are.

And I'm happy to say that after 10+ years of having this game on my backlog, I finally beat it! I didn't 100% the game, but I got to the ending, and that's good enough for me. But did it live up to the hype?

When I first started playing this game a couple weeks ago, I wasn't really sure if I was going to play it all the way through. I just wanted to experience the remake and maybe play a few levels. The story is what really drew me in. But there were many times the gameplay made me want to give up. I was playing on Easy, and man was it tough. I died a lot for some of the boss fights (the hardest ones being Ursula, Riku, and all those mini-boss fights to open the Heartless door near the end). There were several times I thought "I could just give up and watch the rest on YouTube and no one will know." I was also really stubborn and never got Aerora or Aeroga, which probably would have helped a lot. But somehow I stumbled through to the final bosses and didn't have it then, so I figured I might as well just make it a challenge to complete the game - and I did.

The story though is really good, and not too confusing (yet). The fact they got so many of the original OG voice actors for this is really impressive. And on top of that for the new characters they got some top tier talent too. Plus a theme song. There was a LOT of money put into this game. Plus Disney licensing ain't cheap. It kinda had to do well.

I didn't 100% the game, because I was in a hurry to get to the other games and continue the story, but I do plan to go back at some point and do more stuff. I know the Little Mermaid world was optional, but I did it, so I can say I did. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great. I didn't collect all the dalmations, craft the Ultima weapon, collect all the Pooh pages, or synthesize all the things although I made SOME progress on each of those side quests.

If you've never played the game before, you definitely need to play the 1.5 version. It has slightly improved navigation, a handy shortcut menu, and smoothed out graphics. I wish they would have done more with the improvements though because getting to items was still a pain and the amount of times I died in the middle of giving myself a healing item is TOO DAMN HIGH. The platforming elements can be really challenging, so be prepared for some janky controls at times. It's not the WHOLE game though, which is probably why I pushed through. The story is really good and really clever. Unless you hate Disney.

Don't feel like you have to do all the things in this game, especially since you can go back and do them later. You probably should get Aerora though, and spend some time leveling up. Or just die a lot like me and be frustrated. Even Easy mode won't save you forever.

But it's worth playing the game to see what a marvel of licensing magic they were able to blend so well between all the Disney and Square IP. The game (minus the awkward controls at times) holds up really well. As someone who is notorious about not finishing games, if I can finish this one, that's saying something!

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX is a HD remaster of a good old classic extraordinary game called Kingdom hearts. The game itself is a crazy mashup of final fantasy and Disney. Yeah, you heard it right, FF and Disney. So yeah, what can come up from something as ridiculous as this ? Shockingly, something really good.

Do you know that feeling when you boot up a really old game that looked well in your memories and it looks like absolute garbage? Not this time, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix looks exactly as good as in my memories. Which means that they did wonders with it, because there's no way it looked good back in 2002. The game still looks and feels pretty retro, but also looks as good as it possibly can for a remaster, job well done. Cutscenes are also very pretty and to be honest I was pretty shocked that they look THAT good, there weren't many tho. The music is as good as it's always in Final Fantasy games (and to be honest it's a final fantasy game with Disney aesthetic) so 10/10 in that case, just a great soundtrack. I played on PS5 and there were hardly any loading screens and if there were, they lasted like one second. They could work on menus tho, they looked really ancient and were a great pain in the ass to deal with, other then that it's a perfect remaster.

The game itself started really slowly, i was kinda bored at first, not gonna lie. You don't have access to any cool attacks, you don't have companions, skills, cool weapons, you don't have anything. There are too many enemies and you don't know what to do. That was my biggest problem with KH and it still is. I struggled many, many times with what to do next to progress the story. That's the reason why I put KH off when i was a child, I didn't know English at all and i didn't know what to do.All these years passed and this hasn't changed. I still had no idea what to do. I had to google many times and I still had problems with some sections. After some time the game became more obvious and actually fun to play. I didn't have to google stuff that often, I unlocked some cool abilities and I got really hooked. The gameplay became really fun, a good mix of JRPG, slasher, retro 3d platformer with enemies and Final Fantasy. The game was actually hard. I mean, it was a piece of cake mostly, but some boss encounters or frickin mazes with million enemies were as hard as i can imagine. I was actually sweaty in the last hour of the game where you fight ten bosses in a row and you can't save, the Final Fantasy classic. It wasn't challenging, just annoyingly hard. Flying and swimming segments were annoying as well. So yeah, i have no idea how kids beat this game, but it was mostly really fun and provided some good RPGy build making. The game includes some mini-games, but to be honest, I didn't like most of them, arena is really cool tho. I absolutely hated the gummi ship, mostly because of trash controls when making one, but it really grew on me over the course of the game and i really like it at the end. Both the gameplay and the creator.

The story is really complicated and I can't tell that loved it, but I'm indeed interested to see what's coming next, because it surely has potential. It's really confusing and left with many holes tho. Meeting all my favorite Final Fantasy heroes and my beloved Disney characters from my childhood was the best experience in the game. I just really like all these encounters. Dealing with problems from different Disney movies was awesome and kinda touchy, because it reminded me how fun they are. The game also has really good side content. Dalmatians as collectibles are just so smart and cool, trinity symbols were pretty fun to collect as well, different weapons and keyblades are totally awesome when you get the new ones. I also really liked the journal that tells you about characters, plot, secrets and more. The game also provides a shockingly good endgame content, secret bosses, new arena, secret ending to unlock and more.

In the end, KH 1.5 is a great remaster or a really good game that provides fun gameplay, decent plot and totally awesome encounters in all your favorite worlds from Disney movies, just give the game some time and have some patience with some segments.

8.5/10

"All for one and one for all!"

~Wo

If you would've asked me a few months ago what my top 5 games on the Playstation 2 were, Kingdom Hearts would've certainly been on my list. I loved this game when I played it sixteen years ago, and the combination of Disney characters and characters from my favorite era of Final Fantasy was of course an easy sell for me. The idea of replaying this game - and all the others - in anticipation of Kingdom Hearts 3 was an exciting venture, one I couldn't wait to start. However, when I finally returned to the world of Kingdom Hearts after all these years, I felt like my heart had also been ripped out by how disappointing the game actually was.

When I told my best friend - who also looking forward to KH3 - that I didn't like this game as much anymore, she agreed that it wasn't that good and we realized something very important about this era of video games. When you play retro games, there's a muted expectation, the idea that these games are very much from the past, so of course they won't play similar to the games of today. Yet since the PS2 era, the evolution of games has been much more gradual, so games that are almost 20 years old (like Kingdom Hearts) feel similar to what we play today, but are harder to wrap our heads around and harder to maneuver. I also found this to be the case when I played through all the God of War games earlier this year. While the first game was fun, I didn't feel like I had the amount of control I was used to in this type of game, which made the game more difficult than it probably was originally.

I can break down my major problems with Kingdom Hearts in one statement: I always felt like I was doing something wrong. Worlds are small, but almost feel labyrinthian due to the lack of information on where you're supposed to go. Areas like Deep Jungle, Agrabah and Monstro are really only two or three major areas, and yet it's often confusing to try and figure out what you need to do. In a weird way, it's like the game almost needs you to know the story of the films in order to know where to go.

I also found the way that Sora and his crew upgrades and fights to be completely lacking. I never felt like there was any strategy in my fights, but that I was just hacking and slashing. I even looked up strategies to see if I was doing something wrong, but most said to indeed just keep hitting, with the occasional block. I never felt either that the upgrade system was all that worthwhile, especially in terms of learning new abilities. For example, there are certain levels with treasure chests that are just out of reach. I kept thinking that there had to be a way to reach these, I was again just doing something wrong. Not until much later in the game did I realize that the game hadn't given me all my abilities in terms of just physical movements. I felt like my movement was stunted because it was actually stunted.

And you can't talk about Kingdom Hearts without talking about the story, which is already bonkers after the first one. There's no real explanation why these Disney worlds are affected, and the danger doesn't really feel that dire, except in the case of a few Final Fantasy characters. Apparently, Square thought that the game wouldn't do well without Final Fantasy characters - which is insane - and while I did love seeing these characters the first time I played this, now they stand out like a sore thumb. I also can't help but think of how unnecessary it is to have Sora in this game instead of just letting Mickey be the lead character. Plus, by the time you get to the end of the game, not much has really happened. The adventure continues with only slight variations.

Kingdom Hearts is an ambitious game that makes insane choices. It's a game that feels large in scale, but constrictive in individual levels. Kingdom Hearts is definitely a game of its era, and one that feels older than it is because of its odd gameplay and poorly designed levels. And yet, I still get excited to explore these levels that I'll eventually get fed up with. As I finished the final bosses of the game, I still gasped with excitement that the game found a way to throw Fantasia's Chernabog into the mix. There's a magic to this series that could be far more effective, it's just a shame that Kingdom Hearts tends to squander that magic with ideas that really don't work.