While I appreciate that KH1 started the whole thing, it's actually pretty far down my list of favorite entries. Of all the non-mobile games, the only ones I consider worse are Days (actual game, not the cutscene compilation) and Recoded.

You can tell it was still trying to find its footing, especially in the gameplay, which is far less refined than later entries and often very clunky. The world design was okay at times, but then you had Deep Jungle being terrible and things like Hollow Bastion's elevator maze and flying enemies that would hover in place where you can't hit them without falling down to earlier areas.

Boss fights were a bit of a mixed bag for me in this one. Cerberus is annoying, Jafar is a nice idea on paper but terrible in its execution and the optional phantom boss is an exercise in tedium (made worse by the fact it's a giant MP drain)

As for the story, being the first entry of course it was still pretty simple and clean. I'm not sure I agree with you that it stands out as the game where the Disney worlds have the most story relevance. Wonderland, Deep Jungle, Olympus Coliseum, Agrabah, Halloween Town and Atlantica are no more relevant than KH2 or BBS worlds if you ask me.

I feel like all of this makes it sound like I hate the game, which I don't, so I'm trying to think of something nice to say, but I honestly can't think of anything in KH1 that made me go "I *really* like that aspect of it" besides the music.

Overall, looking at the game now, I think it's decent. But I think that's fine, the game's 17 years old and a lot of things in gaming just don't age that well, IMO.