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Kingdom Heart 1.5 FINAL MIX INTERNATIONAL / 274.77 & Knuckles

3 years ago3,421 words

One down, like a dozen left to go! Here are some spoiler-filled ramblings about replaying this game for the first time in probably almost two decades??

The original Kingdom Hearts came out in 2002, so I first played it when I was in my mid-to-late teens. I liked it then and I still do, though there's a ton of stuff I noticed this time around after spending years making my own games. I don't intend for this post to some long analysis or anything - just me blurting out random thoughts I had along the way - but let's see how that goes! (Edit at the end: ha!)

(I think I've replayed it before, a few years after the first time? I honestly can't remember, though!)



My final play time was around 38 hours, though I beat the final boss the first time around the 20 hour mark. The rest of the time was spent trying to defeat the numerous optional superbosses that the game for some reason has. Why does it have those? It seems such an odd choice; like isn't the game ostensibly aimed at - or at least suitable for - children or young teens, considering the whole Disney aspect? Would they be able to beat these monstrously difficult opponents? Or were they just added as a way to appeal to older players, in some "something for everyone" kind of way? (I was probably more skilled at games as a teen than I am now, though!)



Overall I enjoyed the experience! I want to say that first in case the rest sounds like I'm being critical or dismissive. It still holds a special place in my heart, and memories were flowing back for most of my play time. Even without the nostalgia factor though, it's obviously a good game in so many ways, and it's not surprising it spawned the series that's continuing to this day.



The blend of Disney with Final Fantasy works really well! Or is it accurate to call it a blend of those two? I mean it's obviously part Disney, but it's not as if it's explicitly a crossover between that and Final Fantasy. It just happens to have a bunch of characters, spell names, etc from those games. I wonder if it was ever planned as more of an explicit crossover and it evolved into something different, or whether the Final Fantasy bits were just added to the different story they already had in mind from the beginning? I wonder about the process that led to its creation, anyway!



I like story and immersion, so I suppose I should comment on those first! Both are... fine here, I suppose, though I feel like there's a ton of stuff I just accepted without question when I was younger that I scrutinise now that I'm more concerned about every little detail of the stories I'm trying to tell. That's not exclusive to this; I've been noticing recently how a whole lot of stories are shallow and full of weird, nonsensical turns. HMM.




The game focuses on the Sora + Donald (Duck) + Goofy trio, though the latter two feel like they're just there for the most part, barely explored. The trio are portrayed as if they're all close friends - which happens very rapidly - but it all feels like the sort of thing you're just told without it growing or being earned.




There's a little bit where Donald and Sora argue about some trivial thing I've forgotten already, but it comes out of nowhere and is resolved just as fast. There's also a bit where they literally just abandon Sora the moment he loses his keyblade, which felt more rude than emotionally devastating and was also resolved quickly and promptly forgotten about.

It'd probably feel weird though if these silly animal characters were given more serious exploration of their inner workings! (There's a notable emotional bit with Goofy in the second one which always felt bizarre and out of place...) This is probably the best way to go about the characters for this sort of game.

(Also they're all male, which I never thought about during my teens, but did this time due to the cultural shifts since then.)




There's also the Sora + Riku + Kairi human trio, which feels less tacked on and more important to the overall plot (to the point where I wonder whether a game was planned out with them before the Disney additions)... though again there's not that much exploration of any deeper stuff since the dialogue is so brief. It works well for a game focused primarily on action and exploring familiar worlds from other franchises, though!

I liked Riku turning villainous, though it's a shame he wasn't the final villain since Ansem - whose whole character is just "DARKNESS!!!" - came out of nowhere mid-way through and took that place. The first signs of all the other convoluted plot stuff that's to come, though, I suppose!



The connection between Sora and Kairi was weird though. She's made out to be his love interest, his reason for doing all he does, some passive princess to save, but you rescue her around the late-middle of the game and then just completely forget about her. Then she randomly shows up right at the end in this void at the end of the world - how?? - after the actual story stuff's already over, and the final cutscenes focus on her as if she was the main focus all along. Feels like maybe that was the plan, but they changed their mind mid-development or something? I wonder!




There are also the Disney worlds, which have watered-down versions of the stories from their respective films, though they mostly felt contrived or forgettable and seemed to clash with the overall story if anything. I always found it interesting that they got so many of the original voice actors! Though some (I noticed this time) sounded like they were phoning it in, or didn't really understand what they were doing.



The combat's a big part of the games too, obviously. It's okay! It's the sort of thing that's easy to pick up, but which allows for more difficult battles too. Most of my time was spent just mashing the attack button and healing as necessary, though the most enjoyable battles were the ones with bosses whose moves I could predict and skillfully block. Not many of those, but even the button mashing was inherently satisfying thanks to the animations and particle and sound effects. You feel like you're actively involved and acting with great skill even if you're not.



I also liked that spells allowed for at least a bit more strategy, and that there was a limited selection of them - which upgraded rather than you just acquiring the advanced versions in addition - which each did different things rather than just dealing damage of different elements. Mostly I just used Cure and Aero (which increases defence in this for some reason) during the late game though.



I found the MP system interesting. You have a small, limited number of MP, but they regenerate fairly quickly when you inflict damage, or - if you have a later ability - when you're damaged. You don't fill the MP bar directly, rather you fill an orange bar at the side which means it's easier to gain MP back the fewer you have left. MP maintenance was a big part of combat, a good way of introducing limitation without it getting obnoxious.



You earn abilities mostly by levelling up - apparently the stat preference things you choose at the beginning affect which levels you get skills at, as I learned from a guide while working through the super bosses - and use a limited number of AP to equip them. I suspect that at least partly inspired MARDEK's system.

It's fine, I suppose? I didn't like that the powerful attack abilities cost huge amounts of MP (which in this game means 2 or 3) to use, though, and mostly ignored them during the bosses where they'd be most useful because I needed to save my MP for healing. Some abilities were pretty much necessary to win those battles though: MP Rage restored MP when damaged, MP Haste increased MP recovery speed, Second Chance let you survive fatal damage with 1 HP. Definitely added to the feeling of getting stronger, beyond just stat boosts.




You also get six summons - other Disney characters - which I completely ignored during my original playthrough years ago... and mostly ignored this time too, since the battles they'd be most useful in disable them. Which is annoying. I did experiment at least a bit this time though, and found them useful a handful of times. You can't skip the lengthy summon animations though, which is weird.

There's also all this talk of friendship and doing things as a team, but a lot of significant battles must be fought alone. One - against Hercules, I think? - takes away Donald and Goofy for the battle, but it's followed by a scene where they talk about how important friends and teamwork are and how they'll always have eachothers' backs! I thought that was silly.



In my first post about the game, I mentioned dying repeatedly against some early boss, and I don't know why that was! Rustiness? Overthinking it? No Cure yet? Probably factors like those!

I didn't struggle much at all throughout the rest of the main game... until the final boss, this ridiculous Final-Fantasy-final-boss-style monster-spaceship thing, which I absolutely despise. In Neverland, Sora learns how to fly - which I liked a lot! - but this final boss requires you to stay airborne throughout, meaning the usual battle mechanics are different to what you've got used to up until that point (Atlantica used similar swimming mechanics that made it a pain to trudge through). Completely frustrating, not a good final challenge at all, in my opinion. I much preferred the battle against possessed Riku in Hollow Bastion!



There are also the aforementioned super bosses. There are like half a dozen of them - something like that - and I remember being incredibly proud of myself when I managed to take down Sephiroth as a teen. Those were the days when achievements like that were things I'd talk about with my dear school chums (I think?), it felt like some big event that extended beyond the game itself, so I remembered that fondly for years and was so glad that was included in the game (plus hearing One Winged Angel in that battle back then was so amazing!).

I wondered this time whether I'd have improved at all in the years since then, and intended to try to take him down again... which I did eventually do, but it took days of trying! Satisfying, though. (I think I originally struggled because I was dramatically underlevelled; after grinding a bit, he felt much easier.)



But there's also this additional nameless boss - dressed as one of Organization XIII (or whatever they were called?) - which wasn't in the version I played years ago, which I also managed to endure my way through. Unlike Sephiroth, though, where I felt I was getting a bit better with each attempt, and victory felt achievable with a bit more practice, this battle was mostly simple (just mash attack and cure as necessary), until he used this godawful cheap attack where he freezes you, and all your commands turn into a seemingly completely random roulette with three damaging 'Shock' options and one 'Release', which change in a split second so you can't even navigate to the Release one in time, and if you take longer than like three seconds you die anyway, and... ugh. Horrible. Not remotely fun at all. Just luck. The only way I managed to win was when he just didn't use that at all. Maybe I'd have found it more enjoyable if I'd played it when I was younger?



I suppose exploration is a big part of the games too, though I found that frustrating overall. Worlds are made up of a series of interconnected rooms with no map, and you're left to wander between them with no goal marker until you trigger the next cutscene. Often you need to backtrack - which isn't always clear - and I found myself frequently just wandering into plot progression accidentally.



And though I like the look of the worlds in general, the areas are really small and cramped, so the camera often got in the way and I couldn't tell what was going on.

Heartless constantly respawned too, and most encounters had several stages, so maybe you'd encounter three of them, but when you defeated them six more would spawn, then when you defeated them another six would spawn... It just got exhausting, and made me think about how much I prefer the limited number of battles that I'm doing in Atonal Dreams, where you can fully complete an area and render it safe. I ended up just running past a lot of heartless that spawned (and was probably at least a bit underlevelled at the end as a result).



Some other random things:



I like the unique status UIs a lot! Those bars that wrap around and grow as the totals increase - lots of personality there - and enemies' HP bars which can have several layers of different colours; the first time I'd seen such a thing, I think. Though it can be annoyingly vague about how much HP they have or how much damage you're doing.

The stat numbers are small - and it felt like one point made a significant difference - though I suspect behind the scenes you dealt float/fractional damage rather than integers, and that there were complex damage formulae in play rather than straight addition/subtraction (I had noticeably greater survivability after some level ups even if my stats had only changed by 1 or 2 points).



I like the heartless designs! And how there are few of them, and they're based on their worlds, so each one feels meaningful. I noticed there are only around three different species per world that you battle over and over. Something to keep in mind since I wonder how many species per area is enough in my own games.

I like the lore detail about a few being 'pure' heartless while most are... 'emblem' (I think?) heartless, which were created by Ansem, and how that's marked on their design with that heartless symbol. I like symbols!




Games during this era often had two models for the characters: one with a painted on mouth (or whole face), and another higher-quality one which they switched to during cutscenes. This did that too, but really weirdly; the higher quality models would only switch out occasionally during cutscenes, and usually to deliver a single (overacted) line before switching back to the painted-mouth version for the character's very next line. Bizarre! The lines chosen to enhance with the higher quality models seemed so random, too.



I liked the Coliseum a lot! It unlocks early, and you revisit several times to fight hordes of enemies back-to-back. It surely inspired the one in MARDEK, and rekindled my interest in such a thing, so I'll probably include one in Atonal Dreams.



Though the ending felt somewhat weird with Kairi appearing out of nowhere, I like that the bit before that took place on (a dark-tainted version of) the starting Destiny Islands. Book ends! I like that trope. Adds easy feelings of significance.



I also like that King Mickey was made out to be this legendary unseen figure, finally revealing himself in half-silhouette right at the end, with a keyblade like Sora's. I remember wondering back in the day whether it was pandering to Disney in some way - or they requested their mascot be made super impressive - but whatever the development reasons, it works well!

I like Yoko Shimomura as a composer - she's obviously inspired by Classical and knows what she's doing - so I liked the music in this! I always appreciated how Halloween Town and Atlantica used arrangements of their films' most memorable pieces as background music, though Tarzan was the Disney film I watched over and over as a child, largely due to my love of its music, and that music wasn't referenced in this soundtrack at all (maybe copyright issues regarding Phil Collins or something?). I don't much care for that pop song (Simple and Clean) though, and it appearing right at the end as Kairi did felt just as jarring as her appearance did. So fitting, then, I suppose?




Why was Squall renamed Leon?!? I always wondered. Was it just to make him seem cooler or something? The in-game lore says it's due to guilt about failing in the past or something, but I was always curious about the behind-the-scenes reasoning there. I played FFVIII over and over as a youngling, and always imagined Squall as a moping loser like myself, so this cool Leon version of him never felt like the character to me. Maybe I just misinterpreted how he's portrayed in FFVIII though? I'll have to replay that too, one day.



I appreciate the lore/notepad section - that surely inspired me a lot too - though it's... interesting that you have to press a button to show the models (I feel it'd work better with the model next to the description). Surprisingly few words per entry!



I liked the Gummi ship when I was younger, since I loved Lego more than anything as a child and it reminded me of that. These days it'd probably be more likened to something like Minecraft, vaguely? Or all the other construction games inspired by that. I couldn't really be bothered with it this time around, and made some ugly monstrosity for a laugh.

Thankfully the sections are brief and easy. I think they largely scrapped them - or at least pushed them to the side - in later games? I can't actually remember!

I always wondered why they were 'Gummi' blocks/ships; was it a reference to something - some Disney product or work - I was unfamiliar with?



I like that the Disney worlds allow you to add Disney characters to your party, but I don't like that you have to bench either Donald or Goofy (always the latter in my case) to do so. Why not just allow three allies and alter the difficulty of the battles to fit that?



There was this weird scene where a lot of lore/backstory stuff was just dumped on the player via a memory of a never-before-seen-or-mentioned NPC. Strange choice.



So much for being brief!

I want to work my way through the rest of the series since I have all three compilations in my Epic Games library now (not cheap...), but I'll probably play something else next so then I don't get burned out playing through them all back to back!

I'm always out of touch with the communities that grow around these things - or just the gamer community in general - so my thoughts and impressions are my own, not inspired by a group opinion. I always wonder how much they vary from those group opinions because of that, but hopefully if you took the time to read this you got something out of my ramblings!