Appealing...why?

I need help in an unbelievable way....I need help understanding why everyone likes this game because as far as I can tell it is a crappy 3D version of a Mana game from what I played except it stripped out all the good gameplay elements from it and left the battling and level up system.

The jumping and more of the action/camera mechanics are pretty bad just like every square game ever made that is an action-esq game. As a person who plays a decent amount of action games, I found the implementation of this basic stuff to be horrendous to the max...THE MAX!

So what is it that makes this game great? Is the story really that good and compelling that it is worth dealing with the above problems? Is it just for the novelty of having FF & Disney cameos? Is the gummy ship really that awesome?

Help...why is this game good?

I just play it because Aeris is alive

Everything is cute in Kingdom Hearts; the protagonists are cute, the enemies are cute, the Disney worlds are cute, the Gummi Ships are cute, and the story is cute (and exciting)!

Sometimes the camera bothers me, but everything else is fine by me. :sebastian:

camera bothers me too, and the cuteness is getting on my nerves, but for the rest the game is ok.

I think it's a nice story, plus I like Final Fantasy and Disney.. and somehow putting the two together works, at least for me.

When it comes to gameplay the game is lacking a small bit, but it became better in Kingdom Hearts 2.. which is overall just a better game than the original.

The main reason why I like it is exactly the things you don't like, the movement and action. I find it much better than any Mana or FF game.

By the way, was this thread only created because of the Cid Knight challenges?

It's got Disney characters in it, which for me hold a special place in my otherwise cynical and blackened heart.

On one hand it was created because of the competition and on the other hand I just like to bitch about a few games every now and then XD This happens to be one of them. I can't remember if I ever made a thread here on this but I do remember taking peeps at gamestop down when I worked there XD

My original reason for buying this game was to kick ass with Donald and Goofy :D

In reality though, I consider myself a diverse gamer, I like slow, turn-based games, I like ATB games, and I like Active games like KH.

Utada's songs from the commercial drew me in. That, and the storyline looked really great and different.

I can make this easy for you and tell you that you will never understand why people like it, and I can tell that by the fact that you said it's "stripped of good game mechanics," which is horribly false. That's especially true for the second game, since it has quite possibly the best 3D camera I've ever experienced in an action game. But to make a short story long I'll elaborate a bit on this. Sure it's a flawed series by a gameplay standard, but I'll get to that once I explain all the positives that greatly outweigh the negatives.
First of all, the surprise factor helped the first game immensely. Kingdom Hearts could have easily been a throw away game to make a lot of money with minimal effort, and it would have. It almost was, in fact, and one person you can thank for it not is the Gooch. Instead we got a very well made game with a surprisingly deeper story than one would have expected, that at the same time remained faithful to both the classic Disney films and Squares own games.
Second, you're right about it being a lesser Mana series. It is similar, and yet much inferior to games like Secret of Mana or Seiken Densetsu 3. That doesn't make it bad. Mana is one of the SNES's best titles, and Seiken Densetsu 3 can stand on it's own against any other Square game. The first game suffers from camera issues, and the second suffers from a childish difficulty and terrible linearity, but they're easily two of the best games for the PS2, and I would even go so far as to say they're the Square side of Squeenix's best titles on the PS2. Now, for a Square fan who could care less about Disney, it might not be as highly regarded, but they should still be able to appreciate it for being a well made game.
After all, the idea alone that you could pull off a concept like Kingdom Hearts at all is unfathomable, and yet they far exceeded any expectations.

Also, the jumping (which isn't even that bad) has no relevance. Kingdom Hearts is about it's combat, it's not a platformer. And while the first game does try to stuff some of it down your throat, the second game has no platform elements whatsoever.

Hated the camera in KHI x.x

CoM I played only because I was a little confused when I started KHII. I thought the cards were a pretty neat renovation, but I didn't like the GBA controls. I am so mad that we aren't getting a PS2 remake, because I think it would be so much better with a Playstation controller.

KHII was NEAT n.n

I liked it for all of the reasons you don't.

Music is average, story is crap, gameplay is quite entertaining, cameos range from boring ---> awesome.

The main reason I like it is because of the awesome characters that appear. But imo KH >>> KH2. Tho' I played less than half of KHII in the end. (I was doing POTC. How far was that?)

Ooh! I like the music in KH, especially Dearly Beloved and the orchestral version of Hikari. :ariel:

I started playing because a friend recommended the first game to me when it came out. Then I fell in love with it. :D

Each game (KH I and KH II) has their pros and cons.

KH I

What started it all for me was a TV commercial. KH I was the first game I purchased with my new PS2. I instantly fell in love with Hikari/Simple & Clean and the opening. What stuck with me was the plot. At the time I had not long ago read William Golding's Lord of the Flies and so the plot had reminded me of that. For a game with Disney in it, it proved to be surprisingly serious. The FF cameos and the Disney ones were for the most part well done (from what I remembered). The fighting mechanics were decent though they get improved upon in the sequel. I liked the spell selection, especially the fact that Graviga was your friend (I was sadden when it was removed). Overall the difficulty was consistent and good.

KH II

I hated the first two hours of the game. Okay, not so much hate but bored the hell out of me. Once you got to fight, I noticed that the battle mechanics were better (as well as the camera!). Maybe I am lazy but I liked the fact that you could rush towards enemies. The addition of the Reaction button was interesting. It made fighting hords of heartless a lot faster. Sometimes you just want to farm for some synthesis items. Sadly the gameplay really went down in difficulty. Proud Mode offered few challenging fights. Oh did I mention that I am in love with Passion? Awesome song. The plot remained pretty good but lacked the depth of the previous one and seemed to be a sequel with prequel information (i.e. you basically found out all about Ansem and such and part of the events that led up to KH I). Though I think the whole heart, body and soul distinction was interestingly developed further. I wonder if a "soulless" or "no souls" will be next. :P Disney in this game was both good and bad. Atlantica? WTF? Seriously. W.T.F. Timeless River was nifty as was the fact that you finally get to go to Disney Castle (anyone ever noticed that in KH I, Queen Minnie's head was monstrously disproportionate?). One thing nice about KH II is that if I want I can pick it up and just play for a little while. Both games had extra content which was nice, as well as they advanced the gummi system in KH II. The sucky part is the whole Custom Gummi creator got too confusing for me in II. :/

I like this series because it reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons in an action role-playing video game environment. I like the way that Donald Duck and Goofy help out in battles, and I love action role-playing games that have party management and action.

Are the story and environment a little quirky? Yes. I feel that this gives it a unique charm.

I haven't finished KH2, but I like it because of the emphasis on friendship (so far) as opposed to romance and because it's like playing a fairy tale. FF games are more like playing epic poems.

My feelings for KH have changed drastically over the years. I intially played KH1 cause I was curious and I thought it would be a light hearted fun experience. I was right initially but the game turned out to be much darker and deeper in its story than most thought. The gameplay is simplistic, the camera is awful, and the few platforming elelments combined with Sephiroth abusing the bad camera to get cheap shots made the gameplay not one of the games highlights.

The Disney cameos are fun (I still squeal for joy whenever I visit Winnie the Pooh or go to Halloween Town) and even the FF cameos were handled well despite the fact I only liked a few of the characters who were chose to appear. The ending was corny but emotional and the darker story elelments that appeared towards the end made me look forward to the sequel.

CoM was a game I overlooked initially. I didn't want to deal with a "card battle" system and the reviews were less than stellar, giving off the opinion that it was practically a gba remake of the first game with a little extra content. Then I read a little of the plot on gamefaqs and became incredibly intrigued. I picked up the game and was pleasantly surprised.

The story is rather incredible, outside of revisiting old Disney worlds the story segments between were amazing and quite dark. Organization XIII and the Nobody's were intriguing and the idea of Sora losing his memories due to Namine was well presented. Overall I found it quite surprising and its my favorite plotwise in the series.

The gameplay is hit or miss. Its still a rather basic action game and I'm disappointed by special abilities not being as good but it was fun at least. Playing through Riku's story is more fun in my opinion though it presents a few of the games design flaws. Namely, I'm stuck farming for card to advance further in the game since Riku has a more difficult time getting cards than Sora.

KH2 is another story, of anything its the opposite of the early games. The gameplay is a drastic improvement. The camera doesn't fight and battles flow more smoothly. The introduction of the specail event attacks made battles much more fun. Magic was better designed and actually useful and the guest characters have a better variety and distinction of abilities (especially the team attacks). The worlds are much larger and far more rewarding to play through and with the exception of one world, the world selection was damn near perfect.

The only one I hated was the Pirates of the Carribbian. It felt really out of place and more tacked on then the other worlds. I'm also one of the rare people who like the Little Mermaid world cause that movie was only known for its good music and listening to Donald sing is smurfing hilarious. The Gummi ship segment is incredibly better and at times, I feel its more fun to play than the main game. The other problem which many has mentioned is that the game is dirt easy. Mashing the X button will get you through most battles and even Sephiroth was surprisingly easy to beat down this time around.

My real issue with KH2 is its story... I'm an odd duck cause I actually liked the long ass prologue with Roxas. In those few short hours, Roxas proved to be a much more interesting character than Sora could ever hope to be. Once the game puts Sora back in your hands, its kind goes downhill. Bad plot twists, horrible characterizations, people are introduced and are never used, loose ends, and generally dropping the ball on fleshing out the Nobodies and Organization XIII. Every major plot thread was interrupted by another stupid and pointless plot twist that had no bloody point. The dark and generally deep themes of the previous games lasted only as long as the prologue and then devolved into pretentious bull:skull::skull::skull::skull:. KH2 Killed any of my desire to care about the series... as well as sealing my belief that Nojima is easily the worst writer in popular media...

Olympus Coliseum and Agrabah, I think, are the only worlds of KH that are larger in KHII. The other Disney worlds of KHII are pretty small.

:ursula:

I played and beaten the first game but i'm not sure if i'm interested enough to play CoM or the second title.
Can't say i was very excited about the story or characters and the gameplay was nothing special for me.Also as everyone mentioned it had the worst camera ever seen in a video game.
I admit though,it had a certain charm that was difficult not to notice.

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Originally Posted by Marshall banana

Olympus Coliseum and Agrabah, I think, are the only worlds of KH that are larger in KHII. The other Disney worlds of KHII are pretty small.

:ursula:

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I'd say the only worlds that are genuinely small are the big three surprise worlds. Namely, The Timeless River, Tron, and Pirates of the Carribbian. Beast's Castle, Mulan's world, and the Lion King were fairly large (medium size at least) and Halloween Town is the only world that I feel got smaller besides the Little Mermaid. The original worlds like Twilight Town, Hollow Bastion and the World that Never Was are huge though... Not to mention the minigames in the 100 Acre Woods are way more fun this time.:love:

Of anything, I'm just happy it tone down the narrow corridors and got rid of the heavier platforming elelments. I think the best part is that the worlds actually feel like worlds instead of game levels. Removing heavy platforming elelments and obvious "hit this switch to activate this" did alot more to build a nicer atmosphere. I didn't even mind the fact that the game forces you to replay all the worlds a second time. (The KH version of Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar is much better than the original ;)).

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I'd say the only worlds that are genuinely small are the big three surprise worlds. Namely, The Timeless River, Tron, and Pirates of the Carribbian. Beast's Castle, Mulan's world, and the Lion King were fairly large (medium size at least) and Halloween Town is the only world that I feel got smaller besides the Little Mermaid. The original worlds like Twilight Town, Hollow Bastion and the World that Never Was are huge though... Not to mention the minigames in the 100 Acre Woods are way more fun this time.:love:

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I was not very concerned with the sizes of the worlds because I did, primarily, see them as levels rather than worlds as they were not interactive enough to give a feeling of depth as games like Secret of Evermore.

On the other hand, I was glad that those worlds were there, regardless, because of their Disney roots.

I personally think the series should have stopped at the original. I'm not saying CoM and KHII were bad, but I feel that the original game was fantastic, everything about it, and the other two just weren't as good in my opinion.

I wish that Square Enix had the resources to make large, standalone games that could potentially, yet not automatically, spawn sequels, but that single game is not as marketable as a series of games.

The camera completely ruined KH I for me. It was enough to make me skip the Colosseum and quit playing entirely at the Tarzan level. If I'm fighting a three-headed hound of hell and I can't see him, something is horribly and unforgivably wrong.

Because of that, I never bothered to play number II.

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Originally Posted by Roto13

The camera completely ruined KH I for me. It was enough to make me skip the Colosseum and quit playing entirely at the Tarzan level. If I'm fighting a three-headed hound of hell and I can't see him, something is horribly and unforgivably wrong.

Because of that, I never bothered to play number II.

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Gawd, I hated the KHI camera. I hated the Tarzan level because I COULDN'T SEE AND TARZAN WAS BORING ME. Camera controls are perfected in KHII n.n

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Originally Posted by Roogle

I wish that Square Enix had the resources to make large, standalone games that could potentially, yet not automatically, spawn sequels, but that single game is not as marketable as a series of games.

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You mean like they used to back in 98? ;)

I mostly sign on to see what's up, who's in, who's out, and what's new. I liked that some of the worlds changed. Though it was okay to have a diversion in the game, I didn't like going back to Atlantica for the singalong. I think that if we ever go back to these old lands again, the old villains should be made into Nobodies too.
But, anyway... for me there's just more to like than to dislike. Particularly the Sque characters.