Action! Adventure! Donald Duck?

Like most families, we have a console game system, our drug of choice is the Playstation2. Unlike most families with PS2 consoles, it's mine. Mine, mine, mine!!! Yes folks, I am the serious gamer in the family. The rest of them consider a game a good way to kill 20 or 30 minutes, while I consider it a good way to waste 40 or 50 hours. I'm hooked on a wide variety of games, though my hands down favorites are the epic fantasy games like any of the Final Fantasy series. Square Soft is the king of brilliant graphics, engrossing storylines, and top notch voice work. After finishing Final Fantasy X, I eagerly awaited the next Square offering, and when I heard what it was about, I was a wee bit unsure if I would even play it, let alone add it to my collections of games I must buy and play repeatedly.

You see, Square came up with the idea of teaming up with the Disney studio and producing an epic adventure that combined the usual Square Soft game engine (along with some familiar Square characters) with worlds from the Magic Kingdom, populated with Disney personas. Final Fantasy heroes cavorting with Donald Duck and Goofy? You've got to be kidding. Right? How in the world could this possibly work? Well, somehow it does.

Despite the presence of a plethora of Disney characters, this is not a happy little child's game. Though the characters are true to Disney form, the situations are dark and violent, and the game play itself is too difficult for small children to master.

The game opens with an introduction to Sora, a 14 year old boy living on an island with a group of kids about his age. No adults are seen or mentioned, but they're not integral to the plot, anyway. Sora, like any other kid, wishes to travel far from home and see the world. Surely there's more out there than just his own little corner of the world! At the same time, in another world, the King has gone missing, and it's up to his devoted palace guard and court magician to find him. Enter Donald and Goofy.

Sora and his two best friends, Kiri and Riku, are pulled into another dimension, where they learn that there are many different worlds, all supposed to be separate and unknown to each other. Doorways have been opened in each world, allowing The Heartless to enter, stealing the resident's hearts to gain strength. Each world has a princess that has been abducted, and it's up to Sora and his entourage to seal the doorway in each world, travel to the end of the world and free the princesses, destroying the darkness forever and separating the world's once again.

Each world is a familiar Disney locale. Wonderland, Captain Hook's ship, Ariel's grotto, Monstro the whale, and Tarzan's jungle are a few of the worlds Sora must "lock up". In each world, Sora, Goofy and Donald are aided by the main character in that world. Peter Pan, Tarzan, Ariel, etc. In typical Square form, along the way you can gather "summons" powerful entities that can help you in battle. In the Final Fantasy series, these took the form of mythological characters like Ifrit, Shiva and Bahamut. In Kingdom Hearts, Sora gathers up The Genie, Dumbo, and Bambi, among others.

Anyone who has played one of the Final Fantasy games will be instantly familiar with the game engine. Find, earn or buy weapons, armor, abilities and magic, with more powerful ones becoming available the further into the game you get. And like Final Fantasy, the game contains myriad side quests that aren't necessary for the completion of the game itself, but by finishing them you can attain handy items, weapons or abilities. These include finding the 99 lost dalmation puppies and helping Winnie the Pooh rebuild the 100 Acre Woods.

The game is fairly linear in that you must complete tasks in each world to travel on to the next world, but once a world is completed, two more world open up, leaving you to decide which one to tackle next. To travel between worlds, you take command of a Gummi ship. The first trip to a new world requires manual navigation (and shooting down hostile spacecraft), but after the initial voyage, you can choose "warp" to travel instantly between worlds.

The game controls themselves are easy to use, with directional buttons and/or the left joystick controlling movement. The X button is the "order" button, which you use to attack, summon, or use magic (you select the order from a short menu that appears). The circle, triangle and square buttons do different things at different times. If you press the R-2 button, this brings up a list of three spells that you have assigned to those three buttons, for quick usage. For instance, you can assign Cure to the triangle, and Fire to the Square button. Press R-2, then the triangle, and you can heal yourself or another party member without having to choose magic from the list, scroll down to the correct spell, then press X. Depending on what world you're in, the buttons control other actions. In Ariel's world, the buttons will help you swim, float up, and sink down. On Captain Hook's ship, they're used for flying. The main quibble I have with the controls is the R-1 button. This is the target locking button, which is best left unused. Many of the Heartless are active little buggers, jumping around all over the place like rabbits on speed, and if you're locked on to one of them, the camera will be whipping around all over the place, making it impossible to see that you're doing. The best strategy seems to be to save the target lock for the big bosses that have specific zones that have to be hit before any damage is done to them. Another annoyance is Donald and Goofy's "auto usage" of items. These two use AI to help you in battle, and do whatever they think is necessary to win. You can customize their settings, telling them to "always use defensive magic" to "only use in emergencies". I quickly discovered that on the "use all the time" settings, Donald and Goofy used more drugs than a crack addict with a thousand dollar bill. Losing one health point is enough to make them dip into the health potion, depleting your reserves quicker than you can say "Bad dog!" As he builds up experience and magic points, Donald learns to cure everyone with his own magic, so you can keep the health potions out of his reach (luckily, you have to actually put the items in their stock before they can use them). If you set them to only use items in emergencies most of the time, then switch to "always use" right before big boss battles, you should make it without running out of important potions.

Speaking of bosses, the bosses are wonderful. All the Disney villains are in on the plot to let darkness take over the universe. Maleficent, Jafar, the Demon from Night on Bald Mountain (Fantasia), Captain Hook, and Ursula are all there. Some of them are fairly easy to beat, while others are a serious pain in the rear to beat into submission.

Despite the presence of scores of Disney characters, Kingdom Hearts has Square Soft written all over it. The graphics are amazing, and the story advancing movies are gorgeous. Each Disney world is true to the original movie it came from, and the Disney voices are almost identical to the original voices. The Square characters should be recognizable too, with the likes of Haley Joel Osment, Billy Zane, David Boreanaz, Mandy Moore and Lance Bass.

I finished the game after 50 hours of playing time, and I didn't finish any of the side quests. Obviously, completing them will add extra playing time, and I've heard that by completing these quests, you'll see different endings. An added incentive to either replay the entire game from the beginning, or at least making sure you save the game before you enter the Final Bastion for the last time (you can revisit worlds if necessary after you've sealed the keyholes to lock out the heartless).

Kingdom Hearts is one of those rare games that combines action, adventure, and graphics and a plot good enough to make you wish it was a movie. My husband enjoyed watching me play it just to see what was going to happen next. Now that is the mark of a good game!