Kingdom Hearts

The Good
I loved the sound and graphics, the battle system, music, story, almost everything.

The Bad
The only thing that annoyed me was the camera .

The Bottom Line
Well, you just need to get this game if you like Final Fantasy, because... well... it's Squaresoft who makes Final Fantasy, and this is just a brilliant game.

Score: 5/5

The Good
How "Kingdom Hearts" ever got past its initial boardroom pitch is beyond me. Whoever came up with the idea of combining Final Fantasy with Disney should have been laughed out of the room for such a ridiculous idea. Fortunately for us, the absurd pitch worked, and the result is one heck of an enjoyable game.

The powerhouses of Disney and Squaresoft meant a huge budget for this baby, and it shows. The graphics, music and voice acting (by an A minus cast of Hollywood actors and Disney voiceover artists) are flawless and simply breathtaking.

This game's been out for a good while now so I'll rush through the plot. You play a kid by the name of Sora who, with the aid of (ahem) Donald Duck and Goofy must set out to defeat a shadowy bunch of monsters called the Heartless. The Heartless have teamed up with just about every Disney villain there is and have taken over the, er, wonderful world of Disney. So our trio of heroes must set out through various beautifully rendered Disney worlds (Neverland, Atlantica, 100 acre Wood etc) and banish the Heartless.

It all sounds a bit childish and it is, but it's great fun. My kids adore this game and it's interesting enough to keep me playing it with them.

Plenty of hack and slash, puzzle solving and a whole lot of jumping keep things moving along nicely, and the FMV and aforementioned music and voices make "Kingdom Hearts" a hugely enjoyable gaming experience.

And any game with James Woods in it is alright by me.

Oh, and Goofy gets to kick some serious ass. Yes, you read that right.

The Bad
The camera can be a bit annoying, particularly on some of the tougher jumping levels.

Boss battles are probably too tough for the young uns.

The Bottom Line
What is there to say? It's already a PS2 classic and you already own it, don't you? You don't? You should.

The Good
I'm not really much of a Disney fan but I really enjoy this game. The graphics are really nice (as usual), and the soundtrack is very good, in fact, I actually have the Simple and Clean song and the cool battle music stuck in my head as I type this review up. The battle setup is nothing like any of the Final Fantasy games, but it's still fun. I also found it odd but strangely fun that you could go to the worlds of classic Disney movies and have the hero of the world actually join you (if you replace Goofy or Donald with that character anyway) and fight the Heartless creatures and even fight the villain/s of that world. I'd tell you how enjoyable everything else is, but that would literally take forever and you'd probably fall asleep before I finished, I really, really, like this game.

The Bad
This is tough. Actually, I really hated the camera angles in Kingdom Hearts. It's very tough to remember which buttons control them. That about wraps it up.

The Bottom Line
Final Fantasy/Disney fans will really find Kingdom Hearts a very enjoyable experience. Go out and buy it if you really like Final Fantasy and/or Disney or at the very least, rent it. It's a major shame though, that this game hasn't (and probably won't) come out for GameCube or XBox.