I didn’t realize that Kingdom Hearts, the original PS2 game, came out all the way back in 2002. And to be completely honest, I was annoyed with my mom for buying me, a ten-year-old boy, a Disney game. But, after a bit of time I got curious and put it in. Now, I haven’t played this game in… I don’t know, Sixteen years. But as I remember, the game was solid. The magic system was a little clunky for my liking, but I’m the type for some good’ol head bashing.
The story seemed pretty straight forward. Help Sora, Donald, and Goofy travel from world to world. Setting right what once was wronged, unlocking worlds (which had some sort of significance), and finding his friends. There were also characters from past Final Fantasy games I knew.
2005: comes along and Kingdom Hearts II comes out, and you better believe I jumped on it. However, this is where the series starts to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Game starts and you play Roxas. “Excuse me, what?” Who is this whiny blonde kid? Why am I in this town? And where is Sora? And then the game has the audacity to say, “Well, you’d know if you’d played the game we released on a different system and told almost no one about. Also, didn’t that little 3-minute video played to Sanctuary tell you enough?”
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I ended up going along with the nonsense, and it turned out to be a fun little ride. Controls were tight, just like the first one. Form changing was introduced and that was really fun. Something about dual Keyblades, and if I remember correctly there was a 3rd one doing something at some point. But all in all a fun little adventure, despite missing some vital background information.
2009: I’m not completely sure how I get it, but somehow 385/2 Days makes its way into my collection of games. This one follows Roxas before the random town and shows you all the adventures him and his two partners/friends go on as part of the bad guys, organization, from game 2. Story-wise, it was disconnected from the other. All these events have no direct impact on the events that have happened thus far. I mean, its nice to finally get context as to why I had to start with Roxas, and more so why I should have cared. However, I feel that’s bad story telling: “Hey, remember that thing 4 years ago that you thought was dumb? Here’s why you’re wrong.” On a different note, I have no idea when this game takes place. The timeline has been screwy since the last game, so I just go with it.
2010 I get a copy of Birth by Sleep for Christmas. I couldn’t do it… I tried. On like four or five different occasions. To me the whole game was the start of the second game. Roxas is back, only he’s not Roxas at all, he just looks the same. There is Terra, who I compare to a whinier Cloud from FFVII. And finally, Aqua who, to me, had absolutely nothing interesting about her.
I have no idea when this game takes place, I assume a super long time before the events of the original game, but I never got any solid point in time. Maybe if I beat it, I would know, but if they wanted me to beat it, they should have made the story stomachable.
