Kingdom Hearts: My Favorite Game I've Never Played

There's been some hype recently surrounding the newest installment in the Kingdom Hearts franchise -- Kingdom Hearts III, that is -- the third main game in the series (that means, of course, not counting the numerous side games that, while adding to the story, aren't titled with flat digits like their predecessors).

What is Kingdom Hearts, you ask? For the sake of consistency I'll explain it in my own words here, but if you already know, feel free to skip this paragraph. Kingdom Hearts, released in 2002 for the PS2, is an action adventure role playing game that combines elements of various Disney and Square Enix properties, telling the story of Sora, a teenage boy, that comes to harness the power of the Keyblade; a key-shaped sword that has the power to light the darkness by releasing "hearts" from beings called "heartless," which are essentially shells of shadow made from the soul of a person who's heart has been stolen. He teams up with Disney's very own Donald and Goofy, (King Mickey's knights), to travel across various Disney, Pixar, and Final Fantasy worlds, killing heartless and saving the inhabitants of each adventure. The games include everything from Cinderella to Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean to Aladdin, and even Toy Story, Final Fantasy VII, Winnie the Pooh, and The World Ends with You, amongst many more. The franchise has spawned numerous installments across many different platforms (much to the dismay of fans), but generally has a very positive critical and commercial consensus. It's definitely a strange mix -- Disney and Final Fantasy? Those things are just so... different. Entirely separate demographics and ideas. How could a game like this, which is licensed, no less, be any good? Well, I've heard it put this way before, and I think it works well to summarize; "Most of the time ideas that sound good on paper are hit or miss. And then, there's ideas that sound awful on paper, like Kingdom Hearts -- that when executed, succeed entirely. It (Kingdom Hearts) was one of those ideas."

Gameplay of Kingdom Hearts III (which has been in development since 2013) was available to a select few recently at some kind of Square Enix conference, or something of the sort. I don't really know what it was. What I do know, however, is that interest in the franchise has started to blossom again, and I thought it appropriate to share my personal story with Sora, Donald, and Goofy, and explain why I love this game that I have never actually played. 

That's right. I love Kingdom Hearts. And no -- I've never played it. 

Well... that isn't quite true. I have played every Kingdom Hearts game saved for Re:Coded and Birth by Sleep, but I have only ever played Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II at my friend's house, for hardly an hour... and that was in fifth grade! I can hardly call myself a fan of the main series games, because I never owned a Play Station console in my life, and I honestly just don't remember much of what I played at his place anyway. 

So why do I like it, you ask? Let me start at the beginning.

Fourth grade. Late in the year -- I remember it was raining for some reason, despite being a month off of summer break (weather in this place has always been strange). We camped out under the overhang in front of our classroom door to stay away from the rain and eat lunch, "we" being three of my childhood friends. One of which (who's name will stay anonymous) pulled a funny little paperback book out of his lunch pail and started reading.

"What's that?" I asked. 

"One of my brother's books," he said. "It's like my brother's game." 

At this point in the conversation, one of my other friends brought out his LEGO Indiana Jones sets and minifigures, so my attention was quickly stolen. But I remembered that book, and I remembered the pictures inside -- not because they were black and white, as most manga tends to be, but because Disney was inside, alongside other characters that looked so interesting, had such unique designs, that I was interested for quite a while and couldn't get it out of my head. 

It was around this point that the school was pushing kids to read hard enough to take us to the city library more than once. I liked reading as a kid (and obviously still do), so I had plenty to look at there. Mostly R.L. Stine and Judy Blume, but somehow I found the manga and stumbled across Kingdom Hearts once again. I checked out a volume (I don't even know if it was volume one), and read it. 

I enjoyed every minute. 

Soon 2009 rolled around. Fifth grade. I remember talking to my friend about that Kingdom Hearts book he read, and like he said back then, he explained to me that it was also a video game. 

Now, my  childhood experience with video games has been thoroughly bashed and beaten for various reasons (which I will probably write another post about one day), so I definitely didn't have this esteemed "Play Station 2" that the games could be played on. I was shit outa luck. No Kingdom Hearts for me. Then, sitting at home, I saw a commercial for Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Thanks to the power of the Internet, I can show it to you.

In the months beforehand, I had bought a Nintendo DS so I could finally play Pokemon Platinum with my friends, who all had Diamond. This was a Kingdom Hearts game for a system I owned! Oh how excited I was. If I'm being honest, I don't remember how I acquired it -- be it gift or purchase, but somehow I got my hands on it and I poured a solid 65 hours into it. It was great. The combat was totally new to me, and the characters (Roxas, Xion, and Axel for those of you that are familiar) captured my childhood heart. There was something infinitely cool about Organization XIII. Probably the long black coats.

Though I played it constantly and loved it quite enough to get my dad to help me build duct-tape and PVC pipe keyblades, eventually I hit a boss I couldn't get past. Some of these levels were very difficult, especially for a kid, but this guy was just the pits, man. It was a giant plant heartless that had some kind of coffin chained to its underside, with legs that dug through the ground and popped up around the area, sometimes swallowing you up. Get too close to the boss, and a giant tentacle would lash out of the coffin and 1 hit KO your player character. Get too far away, and the boss would shoot poison at you. Anything in between would deem your worthy dinner for it's tentacle legs.

God. Remembering it is giving me nightmares already. 

Long story short, I was stuck on this bastard for eight years. Eight. Years. In fact, I JUST recently beat it, with the revival of the franchise fresh on my mind I pulled the game out after eight long years of defeat, tried and failed several times, but finally killed it. (Now I'm stuck on another boss, one that's considerably harder, and I'm debating on genuinely giving up again).

But in between all of this, I managed to order a volume of the manga from the school reader's catalogue in sixth grade, played Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for the Gameboy Advance, and just recently bought Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance for my New 2DS XL. Those games are okay, but I don't have memories with them the way I remember 358/2 Days.

But where am I going with this? Why am I just detailing out a history with this game? Why is it my "favorite game I've never played?"

Just wait a minute -- let me puzzle you further.

While I do like the Pixar movies, I genuinely don't care too much for the Disney classics. I've seen a few, and generally find them pretty monotonous. So despite the love I show, a whole half of this game's concept is pretty lost on me. So back when I was a kid, what was it that fascinated me so much? 

*deep breath*

It was the art style.

It's the first time I experienced that anime style outside of Pokemon, and Bakugan a year or so later. The way Kingdom Hearts's original characters looked was just so unique. Huge colorful eyes, and a spectrum of hair that would give any barber a heart attack. A lot of people don't like the Japanese style of cartooning, but I am not one of those people.

It helped that my first actual Kingdom Hearts game was the one that seriously downplayed the Disney aspect of the story, so when I think of the my memories with the franchise, I don't think of the adventures Sora has with Donald and Goofy in Kingdom Hearts one or two, I think of the black robed Roxas sitting on the clock tower in Twilight Town with Axel and Xion, the three of them eating sea salt ice cream, and wondering about life with emotions. Nowadays I've involved myself with the franchise enough to enjoy the other parts of the story and characters a lot more, and have always wanted to finally play through one and two entirely on a home console. But alas, a Play Station I had not, and still don't.

But finally, finally finally finally, a Kingdom Hearts game is coming to a console I actually own for once. Announced at E3, Square Enix later confirmed that Kingdom Hearts III would actually be coming to the Xbox One as well as the initially planned PS4.

I had always had the Xbox 360, and not even because my parent's got one for me, but because my uncle told my dad that if he could fix their spare console, I could have it. My dad, being the tech genius that he is, fixed it up and promptly gave it to me, but told me he would not buy me another if it broke. My friends (who usually had most of the household systems) could play with me on 360, and this attitude migrated to the Xbox One when it later released and we still wanted to play games together. (Nowadays I sit at it and get angry because no one I played with before plays online anymore, and all the exclusives I actually want are for the PS4).

Now that I'm older and have a bit more money, I'm looking into possibly getting other consoles and games and such, and you can bet your Disney tooshie that Kingdom Hearts is at the top of the priority list. I don't know if other people have such feelings toward a franchise, but despite my limited play experience I still love it to death.