Every now and again, I prefer to let people know what I’m playing on the video game side of things, which unfortunately has been turned away from the PC arena as of late, mostly because of money (I just couldn’t afford to play Galaxies anymore, not with the tooth work I have coming around the corner as near as I can tell), and because I can play console games both in shorter bursts of time, and along with Amanda - I prefer to involve her as much as possible.
And so, as the result of a Christmas gift I received from some wonderful congregants, I now have a copy of Kingdom Hearts. I will admit that I was a weenie about this game; it’s been 50 bucks ever since it came out, but has just recently been demoted to Greatest Hits status - which means it’s down to 20 bucks. I couldn’t justify it for the full price, but I easily can justify it for 20. (And on a related note, get out to Circuit City this week and pick up Prince of Persia - it’s on sale for $35. And it just came out less than a month ago.)
I’ve been playing some of Final Fantasy IV recently, a little bit more Soul Calibur II, and some Final Fantasy X, of course all intermixed with my obsession with Dance Dance Revolution and a little bit of Game Boy Advance action on the side. I’m into the Underworld with FFIV, I’m just past the Chocobo Eater on FFX, half-way through my second trip on Weapon Master Mode on SCII, and I’m busting out with 5-6 footers on DDR.
And so I sat down yesterday to get a little bit of playtime through on FFIV - figured I’d go ahead and level up some, maybe try and snag some sweet equipment for my peoples, normal RPG stuff. I’ve had Kingdom Hearts since Sunday, but hadn’t cracked it yet (I prefer to limit the number of RPGs I’m working through at once, especially with Christmas coming up - but I’ve failed miserably at this point). Well, Amanda sits down and says, “Why don’t you play your new game?” She’s regularly a spectator when I’m hacking away with console games, and she said that she would prefer to check out the new game I’d picked up with the Disney characters.
I will tell you that I was not fully prepared for what graced my television in the next few minutes. Let me try and explain to you what Kingdom Hearts is like for the first couple of hours: it’s like someone took every Disney character and location ever invented, the goofiest Final Fantasy characters they could think of (like Wakka, Cloud, Squall, Aerith, and SELPHIE, of all people), tossed them all together in some kind of bag, shook it up, then added a healthy dose of crack and shook it up again - and out came this game. It plays a lot like a Seiken Densetsu game (read: Secret of Mana) in its gameplay, in that it’s an “Action RPG,” where you directly control the fights in real-time, and it has a lock-on sort of system like the modern Zelda games. It also has a horrible camera system, but the game is interesting enough at this point that it hasn’t managed to get in the way. I think I’ll be playing this one through until the finish before I go back to anything else - at least while Amanda’s around.
I will, however, say at this point that Kingdom Hearts is absolutely worth your $20, Disney characters or no Disney characters.