Kingdom Hearts is so much more than a game with Disney and Final Fantasy characters and ranks up with best games ever.

User Rating: 8.9 | Kingdom Hearts PS2
Kingdom Hearts is the result of incredible work and effort from Square and Disney and is much more than a game with characters from both franchises thrown in. Kingdom Hearts is the story of Sora, Riku, Kairi and the Heartless. Final Fantasy characters make camoes and the levels are based upon Disney worlds, but Kingdom Hearts is a game existing in a different universe that just features these characters, and is a spectacular game to boot. The story is one you would expect from Square. A young boy's life is changed and he is whisked away to a strange land to do battle with awesome and evil creatures with a powerful weapon in hand. Kingdom Hearts' story involves friendship, betrayal, lots of plot twists, interesting characters and good overcomeing evil no matter what the oods. Instead of travelling around one planet and maybe making a journey to a different dimension or they moon, thebulk of Kingdom Hearts sees Sora going to worlds based on Disney films and properties. It brings Disney fans great joy to see their favourite characters from films such as Hercules, Tarzan, Aladdin and Peter Pan, relive the events from the movies and explore the detailed enviroments. The colourful graphics makes this all possible, and the Disney characters look some much like the films. The graphics are beautiful, especially the amazing face motions and CGI, the style departs from Square's usual older styles from previous FFs and some of the Final Fantasy characters such as Squall (Leon in this game), Yuffie, Wakka and Sephiroth will look pretty strange in this new style, but amazing nonetheless. The Heartless resemble some FF monsters and are all pretty detailed. The menu is easy to naigate and the backgrounds of the Disney worlds aren't bland in the slightest and a lot of care has gone into making them like the films, though the character models and CGI movies are where the game really shine in graphics.

The gameplay is a mix of action and RPG number-chruniching that Square is so famously known for. There are loads of battle options such as magic (which can be given a handy shortcut), summons (now being Disney characters like Genie or Mushu) or items. Most of the time, combat comes to down to button bashing and constantly hammering X. Once in a while you'll pull of a special move or use Curaga on yourself but a lot of the time you'll be pressing the attack buttons (X) or the Block/Dodge Roll button (Square). Heartless appear from nowhere and are fought in real time, be warned they are not always easy and some while have a plethora of moves at their disposal that you will have to memorise to avoid.

The Sound is superb. The music is composed by Yoko Shinomoura (hope I spelled that right) and is absolutley brilliant. Each world usually has a world theme and battle theme, nearly all of the time these sound great, and the timing is really good. There are recogisable tunes from The Little Mermaid and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as really cool new ones that all suit the enviroment. You'll find yourself happily humming along in no time. There are also different themes for story events and boss battles, even a new version of One Winged Angel (Sephiroth fanboys and fangirls shriek) and the opening and ending theme Simple And Clean (as well as the brilliant remix) by j-pop singer Udtada Hikaru are excellent, and rival if not best Final Fantasy VIIIs and Xs opening themes. The best part of the sound section is the voice acting. Most of the original Disney voices return and if not, their TV voice actor (for accompanying TV show or House Of Mouse) does the acting. There is a rare case when an all new voice actor is to be used, but they Disney characters always sound great. Square's characters suffern from Celebrity endorsement. David Boreneaz sounds fine as Leon, Steve Burton is the offical voice of Cloud and makes his first appearance here as does Christy Carlson Romano as Yuffie (who is criminally replaced by Mae Whitman in the sequel, even though CCR voices Yuffie in the film). Mandy Moore as Aerith and Lance Bass as Sephiroth don't seem to fit (thanks heavens for Mena Suvari and George Newbern) but all in all, the voice acting is top notch. Being a good four, nearly five years old, Kingdom Hearts is joyously low-priced, and provides excellent value with all it's sidequests and story. So if you haven't bought Kingdom Hearts, do so today, you'll get a good 40 hours of it at least. You can't go wrong with this gem.