This game is only worth spending seven hours and five dollars on.
User Rating: 6 | Kingdom Hearts PS2
Over our two week Christmas break, I rented the highly celebrated PS2 exclusive, Kingdom Hearts. It is an action RPG (role-playing game) that mixes characters from the famous video game series Final Fantasy and the even more famous Disney characters. In Kingdom Hearts, you are a boy that, until he takes his shirt off to go swimming, could be mistaken for a girl. His name is Sora. He lives on a small island with very few inhabitants, where you are trained by other children your age, and your best friend/ rival Riku. You, Riku, and Kairi (the girl both you and Riku have a crush on) decide to travel by raft to find new worlds to explore. On the night before your departure, it starts to storm outside. You run outside to put the raft away, but it’s gone! Suddenly, a whole bunch of shadowy monsters sprout from the dark earth. You try attack the creatures with your wooden sword, but to no avail. After running around for a time, you find a mysterious door that wasn’t there the day before. You go in and find yourself on a new world/planet called Traverse Town. Meanwhile, Donald Duck and Goofy board a spaceship (called a Gummi Ship) that travels between these worlds. They ride it to Traverse Town looking for a guy named Leon. Leon is supposed to know something about the whereabouts of King Mickey, who has disappeared. You on the other hand, don’t have a clue about what to do. You somehow have a sword that looks like a key, and you have to wander around Traverse Town looking for Donald and Goofy. After a long time, you find Leon. You fight him because you are afraid that he might steal your Keyblade, but you get sorely beaten. You later meet up with Donald and Goofy and board their Gummi Ship. They explain to you about some “keyholes” that allow you to travel between worlds. The “keyholes” were opened by some of the famous villains from popular Disney movies, such as Hades from Hercules, Jafar from Aladdin, Ursula from The Little Mermaid, and other such characters. You need to seal these “keyholes” so that the villains can’t travel through them to collect the Seven Princesses of Heart (Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, etc.) It’s not quite clear what the villains plan to do with the young royals, but you know it’s going to be dastardly. Throughout the game, you travel to many Disney kingdoms in search of the “keyholes”. Since the game is an action RPG, there have to be battles. These battles aren’t the polite turn taking battles such as in normal RPG’s, but the hack-at-those-curs-with-all-your-might battles. These battles can be fun at first, but they get really tiring since the enemies keep reappearing once you kill them. Items are also a problem. You get more items than you really need, such as Gummi Ship shields, extra-strength potions, and other items that you don’t really use. They are Star Fox-esque parts as well that get tiring. The beloved Disney character you thought you knew has one or two personality traits that are over emphasized. I didn’t finish this game because it got too repetitive. The story was great though, and should be made into an animated film. This game really is only worth spending seven hours and five dollars on.
