Console Cowardice - A Heartless First Entry

As my last posts states, I have started 3 new games from my backlog. Today's entry discusses the first console game and my initial impressions on it. The game is:

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix

Now, before I start, I have to point out that I had already played about 5 hours of the original version on the PS2 years ago when it had first released. However I pretty much remembered nothing about it other than the fact that the music was pretty great and that the blend of action and RPG elements was at a perfect balance for me.

So it's not really cheating right? I am completing it this time and according to How Long to Beat, it lasts around 38 hours, so I had barely scratched the surface.

I picked this up from Game on a whim after promising myself I wouldn't buy any more games until after I finished my then smaller backlog; obviously failing, I got a great deal on it brand new (think around £20) so justified it as a cheap purchase that would satisfy my RPG itch over a great period of time.

Kingdom Hearts is a game about Sora, a boy with gigantic feet who finds his world devoured by the heartless; the antagonists of the game, and his quest to find his lost friends by searching many Disney worlds and vanquishing his foes with the Keyblade; meeting familiar faces from Disney franchises and Final Fantasy games alike.

Now having started it, I'm very glad that I did pick it up. They say never meet your heroes and in this case Kingdom Hearts is definitely an exception to that rule. In meeting Final Fantasy Characters and Disney Characters that I grew up with, it has so far taken me back to a point in time when video games were fun to pick up and play for me, from start to finish and a time when mechanics felt fresh and new from title to title.

The remastering has done the game wonders in the levels I have played, I'm currently in the *SPOILERS* Little Mermaid world and the cartoon style graphics are somehow even more beautiful than they were when I used to drop the disc into the clattering and whirring black block of time gone past. The character movement is fluid and the frame rate holds up very well, even in the most crowded areas such as the Colosseum tournaments.

The music is a beautiful mash up of relaxing yet upbeat tunes which seem to perfectly encapsulate the theme of the level you are in. This is only in the places I've visited so far, so things may well change. The voice acting however is very atypical of Disney and Final Fantasy; being high pitched and slightly annoying on one end of the scale and full of pessimistic, teenage angst on the other.

I'll talk in detail a bit more in my full write up once the game is completed, but so far, so good. There's the two other bundled games included (re: Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days - the latter being more of an interactive story); not sure how bothered I am to go through those however as I played a bit of Chain of Memories on its original GBA release and despised it.

So if you'll forgive the pun, I think this game holds the key to my success in beating what is still an expansive portfolio of games to complete.