Kingdom Hearts

aka: KH, Wangguo zhi Xin
Moby ID: 7341
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/28 8:51 PM )
See Also

Description official descriptions

Sora's world is shattered when a violent storm hits his home, and he is separated from his two closest friends. The storm scatters the three to unknown worlds. At the same time, there is turmoil in the Disney Castle. King Mickey is missing, and Court Wizard Donald and Captain Goofy are out to find him. On their travels they meet Sora, on his own search for his lost friends. The three are told of ominous creatures called Heartless, being without hearts derived from an unknown dimension and are the ones responsible for the devastating storm.

The Disney villains, enticed by the power of darkness, manipulate the Darkness to help them gather the princesses of heart, who are needed to open a mysterious final door. Upon discovering the link between the Heartless, the storm, and the disappearance of King Mickey, Sora, Donald, and Goofy join forces and help familiar Disney heroes to save their worlds from the Heartless.

In Kingdom Hearts players step into the very large shoes of Sora, wielder of the keyblade. Sora can attack with the blade, and as he levels up he will gain more attacks that are automatically chained together. Sora can learn magic and put healing items into a quick menu, and both can only be used in real time. Donald and Goofy (as well as an additional character exclusive to each world/disney movie) will follow Sora. Their equipment and AI can be adjusted, but they can not be directly controlled. Defeated enemies will drop many kinds of items including synthesis materials. Sora can take these to the Synthesis shop in Twilight Town to turn them into usable items, accessories, and weapons.

Traveling between each world requires Sora's party to fly through space in a Gummi Ship. The Gummi Ship can be completely customized, from speed and armor to weapons and shape, out of parts picked up from destroyed Gummi Ships, found in worlds, or bought from a store. Larger, more complex ships can be built as the game progresses, and plans can be found from destroyed enemies or from an NPC that will automatically build a Gummi Ship of specific specifications.

Spellings

  • キングダムハーツ - Japanese spelling
  • 王国之心 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 王國之心 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

555 People (485 developers, 70 thanks) · View all

Theme Song (Simple and Clean)
Cast (Japanese)
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 40 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 145 ratings with 14 reviews)

Squaresoft and Disney budgets combine for an excellent game

The Good
The game begins slow and light hearted, like pretty much any Squadsoft tale and most Disney Movies. Two boys and a girl (Sora, Riku, and Kairi respectively) on an island enjoy a life that is nice and quiet and safe but things go immediately downhill and Sora discovered he is the destined bearer of the Keyblade. After teaming up with Goofy and Donald Duck shortly after, you go on to meet a variety of characters from Final Fantasy and Disney. You travel from Disney world to Disney world and experience the tales that have been told through Disney cartoons as they are now that the Heartless have interfered in thier progression.

As could be expected after Final Fantasy X, the graphical presentation in this game is top-notch. Without resorting to cell shading, which can be very poorly implemented and distracting in some games, Kingdom Hearts manages to look and feel at times like an interactive cartoon. Even so, the worlds and characters are all very detailed and even the simplest characters are made up of enough polygons to make it difficult to find any jagged edges on anything unless they were designed to have them. Lets not forget the spectacular and attractive effects you see in pretty much every battle or cutscene that make the battles more engrossing.

The sound and music are also well done, which is no suprise with Square on the job. With the most of the PS2's resources going to the graphics of the game the music has had to remain synthesized instead of composed and recorded but the game doesn't really suffer for it. The voice acting is usually spectacular, featuring some big pop star names like Mandy More and Lance Bass in addition to the voices behind the Disney movie characters. Billy Zane does an excellent job as well, and is a welcome addition to any game he lends his voice to. There was only a single time where emphasis on different words meshed incorrectly, pointing to the fact that videogame voice acting tends to be recorded in isolation from other actors and without knowledge of how the other actors portrayed their characters. Less can be said of even excellent games like Final Fantasy X.

The Bad
There is not a lot to complain about in this game, unless you don't like 3rd-person adventure/RPG type games.

Initially I did not like the fact that Sora carries a weapon that is basically a big key. The overly "kiddie" weapon appearance was easily remedied early in the game when you get a "keychain" that upgrades your weapon. It actually LOOKS like a blade eventually!

The camera could sometimes have major problems in large heated battles. There has yet to be a perfect camera in any game like this though, so this can not really be held against the Square development team. There are so many variables involves in camera movements and enviroments, especially in those of Kingdom Hearts, a perfect camera may just be a pipe dream.

A personal gripe, though largely incosequential, is that the music in the optional Sephiroth battle should have been orchestrated. Once you've heard One Winged Angel in it's live and orchestrated form you never want to go back.

The Bottom Line
This game is a fun adventure for all ages. Depending on what character development choices you make early in the game, it may be too difficult for very young players. For advanced players that desire a challenge you can set the difficulty to "Expert" for a real challenge.

If you don't like adventure games but wish to just collect Final-Fantasy or Disney related games then you will definately want this one!

PlayStation 2 · by Weston Wedding (61) · 2003

Square + Disney = High Production Values

The Good
With the combined prowess of Square and Disney, it is no surprise that Kingdom Hearts is a highly polished game. This 3rd-person adventure/RPG pits the young protagonist Sora against the armies of the Heartless. In order to stop the heartless, Sora must travel to a number of worlds straight out of the Disney movies. Each world Sora visits, along with his AI controlled companions Donald and Goofy, is well designed and instantly recognizable to anyone with a passing familiarity with the appropriate franchise.

These individual worlds Sora travels to look fantastic. The characters are well voiced and the combat system is entertaining and challenging. The story, while certainly not Square's best (or Disney's for that matter), is interesting enough to keep you playing. In normal Square fashion, there are numerous secrets to find and collections to complete most of which are enjoyable. Overall, the core gameplay is well done and highly polished and is bound to entertain action-RPG fans, Square fans, and Disney fans alike.

The Bad
One of the most disappointing aspects of the game lies within the 'Gummi' ship levels found when traveling between worlds. These levels take the form of an on-the-rail shooter. In these levels, the player flies through a psychedelic backdrop shooting ships, asteroids, and other obstacles and then picking up various parts that they drop. A significant portion of the treasure and secrets found within the game result in additional parts for this Gummi ship. The player can then use these parts to design additional ships with increase speed, firepower, etc. While this could have been an interesting concept, the Gummi ship levels are entirely unrelated to the game. You can go through all these shooter levels without dying once or even being challenged. This eliminates the need for any such ship modification beyond using the ship design portion of the game as a time sink. While this may appeal to some, It was disappointing to me to have a large amount of the treasure and secrets in the game result in something that has a net effect of zero on the game.

An additional problem encountered stemmed from poor camera control in a number of locations. There were numerous times when the player is forced to make a jump they can not see due to issues with the camera.

While the worlds are well designed graphically, several of them are poorly designed from a gameplay stand point. These worlds (the Tarzan world in particular), suffer from extreme repetition in which the player must visit the same locations within that world over and over. This has a tendency to artificially extend the time the player spends in each world running from location to already visited location.

Finally, like most Square games, there are numerous cutscenes throughout the game. This has a tendency to halt the flow of the game. While this may be forgivable due to the high quality of the cut scenes, the fact that the player can not skip the cutscenes is not.

The Bottom Line
While there are a number of flaws in this title, it is hard to not enjoy the game. The seemingly incongruent mash-up of Final Fantasy and Disney works surprisingly well. The core gameplay is enjoyable and the story, while not up to the usual Square standards, is entertaining as well.

PlayStation 2 · by pogalogen (9) · 2007

One of the best games I've ever played

The Good
Kingdom Hearts is one of the best games ever to grace the Playstation 2. It is essentially something along the lines of Final Fantasy meets Disney, with characters like Yuffie, Squall (aka Leon), Cloud, and (of course) Sephiroth, as well as Disney characters like Donald Duck, Goofy, Pinocchio, and many more. The game is balanced in difficulty. It's not too easy or too hard. The voice cast is one of the best in video game history, including Haley Joel Osment as Sora the protagonist. There are plenty of secrets hidden all through the worlds, which give the game much replay value.

The Bad
The only real fault that I found while playing this game is the inability to complete the game properly. After defeating the final boss, you get a long cutscene (which can't be skipped) and the credits (which also can't be skipped). After that, It shows the characters with the words "The End" onscreen. The only option is to switch off the console. In other words, you can't save the game after defeating the final boss.

The Bottom Line
Overall, I would recommend Kingdom Hearts to any video game fan.

PlayStation 2 · by J.D. Majors (14) · 2009

[ View all 14 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Kingdom Hearts appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Characters

Aside from Disney characters that are not surprise to encounter, you will also encounter several other characters from SquareSoft other games, such as Squall (main protagonist from Final Fantasy VIII), Selphie (a party character from Final Fantasy VIII), Tidus (main protagonist from Final Fantasy X), Wakka (party character from Final Fantasy X), Aerith (from Final Fantasy VII), Cloud (main protagonist of Final Fantasy VII), Sephiroth (nemesis in Final Fantasy VII), and other.

Contest

The secret boss Kurt Zisa in the US version is named after the winner of a contest held by Squaresoft to promote the game.

Theme song

The theme song, Simple and Clean (English) and Hikari meaning "light" (Japanese version), is written and performed by Japan's pop artist Utada Hikaru. After the release of the game's original Japanese version, Hikari was released separately and, according to IGN, sold about 860.000 copies.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2002 – Best Use of License of the Year (PS2)

Information also contributed by monkeyislandgirl and Sciere

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Hearts of Iron
Released 2002 on Windows, 2003 on Macintosh
Shadow Hearts
Released 2001 on PlayStation 2
Hearts of Iron II
Released 2005 on Windows, Macintosh
Asdivine Hearts
Released 2016 on Windows, Macintosh, 2017 on PlayStation 3...
Kingdom Hearts II
Released 2005 on PlayStation 2
Asdivine Hearts II
Released 2017 on iPad, 2018 on Android, Windows Apps...
Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience
Released 2019 on PlayStation 4
The Hundred Year Kingdom
Released 2022 on Nintendo Switch, Windows
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
Released 2004 on Game Boy Advance

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 7341
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by vism.

Additional contributors: MAT, Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, Guy Chapman, monkeyislandgirl, Solid Flamingo, DreinIX, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added October 2, 2002. Last modified January 16, 2024.