Kingdom Hearts -- I just don't really get why it's so popular

[StarStruckStrumpets]

The first had astounding charm, but also managed to pull off some really gothic scenery, and it was totally fucking awesome. The second was a real disappointment. The second seemed to improve on what needed improving from the first, but threw everything else out of the window, and the tone just wasn't the same. The nobodies were way to sterile, so were their environments.

As much as I dislike the franchise at the moment, I continue to play all of the titles, and still hold the first as my favourite game of the PS2 era.

That said, dare I say it, the spin offs like 358/2 days and also Birth By Sleep, I've actually enjoyed. Sora was out of the picture and was replaced with characters related to Sora, but with a far better personality. I've still yet to complete both, but it isn't because I don't like them, I just haven't had the time.

358/2 Days was excellent. Wonderful storytelling, wonderful settings, wonderful characters. It was more about characterisation than spectacle, which I loved. It's my second favourite title, and the ending made me cry tears of manly man...ness.

 

[LightspeedJack]

Love the games, great gameplay plus the whole Disney nostalgia. As for why Sora has the keyblade this is explained in the prequel "Birth By Sleep".

 

[Hristo Petrov]

One of the reasons why I never bought a KH was "Includes guest characters from the popular Final Fantasy series" i don't remember where i read that but my thoughts were
1. So are your characters so bland and uninteresting that you need to borrow some from a already popular series with a established fanbase
2. Those guest characters will 100% be fucking Cloud and/or Squal and of course Sephirot because FF7 was such an enormous achievement that even years later we can't move on
3. BRING BACK Terra YOU ASSHOLES I ACTUALLY LIKED HER

 

[yellingatpixels]

Hi. New girl here.

I may have a different perspective here. KH was the first game I played by myself, start to finish. Before KH I liked games, after I was a gamer. Yes... I was, ooh about 28 at the time.

It had an easy start, nice and easy but engaging. The engagement came from the amount of stuff there was to explore. The first world (destiny island) was a very enriched environment, and it was just the tutorial level.

After that what I enjoyed was the amount of exploration. Get new abilities, new stuff opened. Other games have done this, but with other games it seemed very obvious. Get this ability: open this whole new level. KH, when you got new abilities, new areas of the game opened up, but you had to discover where these new places opened. They put in lots of "carrots" to get the player to learn new and explore new areas.

Through gameplay (increased exploration ability) they created emotion (wonderment).

I think it could have been whole new characters (i.e. not Disney) and it still would have been excellent.

That being said the rest of the KH games don't seem to have this. In KHII you went back to old worlds cause you HAD to, not because you WANTED to. Hence wonder and exploration took a back seat to what seemed like grinding.

 

[GoWithDAFro]

The popularity is probably due to the insane idea of it. People hear about Disney crossing with FF, and whether they think it's a brilliant idea or an incredibly stupid one, they decided to try it, just to see how it works out. AND IT DID. Beautifully. It had a story filled with Disney magic and gameplay and world design comparab;e to Final Fantasy games. It was an anomaly you had to play to believe. If you can still stand Disney, you're probably going to like this game.

IMHO, none of the other games quite reached the level of the first, but they were all good games, and so the popularity has been maintained for almost 10 years. You were probably just overhyped by those that love one or more the games. And a certain mindset is required to really love Kingdom Hearts instead of liking it. No I'm not saying that you "don't get it". I'm saying that maybe you aren't as willing to suspend your disbelief, or just want to mute anytime you hear the word "friendship". Or maybe you just aren't as into this type of game generally. You like the game, just not as much as other people. We all have different tastes.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

I say it's the character development of Organization XIII and the love triangle between Sora, Riku, and Kairi.

I forgot. Was it Kairi or Riku that was the focus of the love triangle?

In all honesty, the series was more enjoyable when it didn't take itself so seriously and just let you explore. I can't even tolerate the new games because it takes itself too seriously for what it is. I like the playful aura the first game had about it, and the KH story, as said by others, gets worse the more you complicate it.

Kairi

 

[digipinky75910]

If you're against Goofy and Donald, two of the recent games, "Birth by Sleep" and "358/2 Days" don't feature Sora, Donald, and Goofy as the protagonists. BBS is getting rave reviews both for story and gameplay.

As for the story-line questions you don't know yet, 1- yeah, there's plenty yet to explore, hence the sequels. 2- Try reading the Ansem/Secret/Xehanort Reports, they fill in a lot of gaps.

If you have a PS2, and I know you do, I recommend you track down Re:Chain of Memories. It was the first game I managed to play, and it made me fall in love. I *liked* the card-based battle system (in addition to the regular way, so I'm not weird) and I like the story. Also has what I think is some of the saddest moments of the series.

Alright I'll check it out. C: Thank you for your opinion.

I mentioned in one of my replies giving the main series another go. Also somebody said I wasn't paying attention or something. But uhm, I was paying attention. I play JRPG's because I like story..but yea, I didn't get it -- but maybe it's because I wasn't reading the secret reports and what not.

I will definitely give it another one of these days. When I'm done being obsessed with RE4... >w>

Birth by Sleep, being a prequel, answers a *lot* of questions. Plus, for me, wondering about all the stuff not spelled out is also a draw for me. Not to mention of course a tool for getting you to buy more games.

There's also a new game coming to our shores soon I don't think has been mentioned yet called "KH Re:Coded" I believe. I've read the script for this, and it seems entertaining to me. It will also tie together Birth by Sleep, 358/2 Days, and KH2. I believe it'll be for DS if I'm not mistaken.

That reminds me.

I really enjoyed in particular the Pirates level so much I yearned to find a Pirate game all by itself, but I have yet to find one that I like at all. :sadpanda:

I also really enjoy the continued storyline in Nightmare before Christmas.

I love the Lion King area, as do many others. You could make the whole game just running around as a lion.

Birth by Sleep introduces an element known as a Keyblade Inheritance Ceremony, as well as the Mark of Mastery Exam, which Sora and Riku will also be asked to undertake.

Maleficent, definitely a badass villain. How often in a Disney movie can you have someone invoke "all the powers of hell!"

As I said, worlds colliding - Disney grows up a bit, and FF must take them seriously, with Sora being a balance between the worlds: all of them.

I love how the Disney worlds have been so faithfully recreated. Every castle dungeon, forest, even music resembling their original. The writers really did their homework as well.

 

[Austin Howe]

Kingdom Hearts often benefits of being a puzzle with many great pieces, as opposed to a unified whole. It's button-mashing combat (whilst lacking depth, and ultimately wears off in appeal) is appealing to gamers of damn-near all stripes, it's endings are typically beautiful, tinged with tragedy and a bit of heartbreak, and Yoko Shimomura has long surpassed Nobuo Uematsu as being the best composer in the genre, her pieces being highly reflective of the games in nature, whilst many of the pieces also denote the darker side of the series that lends those endings their hint of the tragic. I thought they lost touch with reality (and good design) when the sequel came out in 2005, and, having played every game since, I can attest that they still have the combat, which got better in Birth by Sleep (marginally, and it always needed improvement, as opposed to the simple addition of flashy animations), but it's marred by bad level design, rote, redundant repetition, (358/2 Days is smaller parts of previous games watered down to the level of those containers of colored sugar water in the plastic miniature barrels) and the worst plot spackling this side of, well, the series pretty much defines bad spackling.

Still, despite the series decline in quality, Tetsuya Nomura and Yoko Shimomura are both incredibly talented, and I definitely look forward to the ever-delayed release of Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

I liked the story, the characters, the art work, and -especially- the combat. The ending was one my favorites of any video game. It had the right combination of everything for me to really enjoy it. I've beaten it several times, and it's not often I'll replay a JRPG. They really messed up the combat for me in the second, so I never finished it. It was the magic and limit break(can't remember what it's really called) system, I preferred the active system in the first that required me to hit things to charge my mana. I haven't played any of the others yet, nor do I plan on it. They haven't appealed to me.

 

[Vesskel]

I kinda understand what you mean, to be honest when I think about the kingdom hearts story it makes very little sense, (especially how leon says that the keyblade is the only thing to kill heartless....and then kills one 2 seconds later) and it seems rather silly,

They actually explain that in Days apparently any weapon can defeat the Heartless, but they'll just come back some time afterward. The Keyblade is the only weapon that can purify the hearts that make up the Heartless upon defeating them, vanquishing them for good.

Ok that makes sense, that's the only 1 I haven't played thro and beaten XD.

 

[teknoarcanist]

Atmosphere did it for me. Those first two hours or so...and Hollow Bastion...there are just sections of Kingdom Hearts that reach a fever pitch of good story, great gameplay, grand music, and excellent atmosphere all around.

 

[SodaDew]

Its because they mixed Disney (popular) with Final Fantasy(even more popular) with dark clothing/goth design (really popular. But personally the game would have been better with out Final Fantasy, now people are calling Squall Leon which pisses me off....

 

[Ace of Spades]

Everyone tells me that Kingdom Hearts is supposedly a combination of Final Fantasy and Disney, but as someone who enjoys Disney movies and Final Fantasy games, I was left rather unimpressed. I had no idea what was going on in the story and the gameplay wasn't very interesting to me. It's just not my kind of game.

 

[TehCookie]

I've been tempted to buy it but would it still be good if I have no interest in the characters? (I have a fear they would mess up Clouds and Sephiroth's personality and I've never liked most Disney stars). I'm a huge fan of most JRPGs though so as long as it has solid game play and a good story I'd be willing to get it, but it seems like the characters are the main reason people like it.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

I'm different. I really dislike Kingdom Hearts. Having Donald Duck and Goofy appear in a "serious" plot is stupid, and ruined the entire sense of Epic for me. Trying to make Mickey Mouse badass is basically like building a house destined to fall in on your head -- a failed waste of time. Mickey Mouse is a cute caricature. Ansem is a badass. You cannot combine the two. Mickey/Donald/Goofy's voices made my ears bleed; Sora is too young and naive and really isn't a deep character; I hate Pete; the game couldn't figure out whether it wanted to be a platformer or a hack-n-slash or an RPG and never really did any of them particularly well.

Basically it was a clash of genre that was never ironed out. Going around and solving the Trite Disney Plots wasn't satisfying. The MetaPlot was really awesome, but tainted by people like Mickey Mouse, Donald, Goofy, Minnie, the Chipmunks...basically, everything silly in that game ruined all the Epic.

If I want Disney in a game, I'll buy a Disney game-from-movie. If I want epic, I'll buy an epic game. Please keep either out of the other.