Story:
The story begins with Sora, Kairi and Riku, three young friends who are bored of living on Destiny Islands and are eager to explore other worlds. Unexpectedly the chance arrives when during a wild storm, Sora finds himself separated from his friends, in a new and unknown place - Traverse Town. Here he meets Donald and Goofy who have also lost somebody. The three decide to travel together in search of their missing friends. From that point on, many adventures and new friends await them, as they fight to uncover the truth of the darkness and prevent it from consuming the worlds. The whole idea of darkness and light is the main theme in this game, and how the light that we hold within our hearts is strong enough to overcome darkness and evil. This may seem a bit deep or sentimental but I think it is a charming storyline and the sort of thing you'd expect in a game with Disney's name on. There are lots of original ideas in the storyline which make it unlike some typical RPGs. For example, the enemies, called "Heartless" are normal people whose hearts have been consumed by the darkness and Sora's weapon is a key, which he also uses to seal keyholes in each world and prevent the darkness coming in. I couldn't compare this storyline to any other game I've played and I think it grabs your attention and feels very involving throughout the game. It makes you smile in certain places and makes you feel sad in others. Like a Disney movie, I think Kingdom Hearts has that special magic to conjure up a range of emotions while playing.

Characters:
Where to begin? There are a huge number of Disney characters ranging from Winnie the Pooh to Beast, nearly all of whom you will meet and befriend on your adventure. Many of these characters are voiced by their original voice actors superbly and despite being 3D they seem spot on with their original cartoon selves, in the way they look, act and speak. You also get the chance to have some of these characters fight in your team at places in the story, which is interesting and fun as they have unique abilities and can be quite useful. Sora and his friends Kairi and Riku are new characters created by Squaresoft. Although drawn in a cute Disney style, with huge yellow shoes and large heads, they are very much like the characters you might expect to encounter in a Final Fantasy game - the young hero Sora, the innocent, happy Kairi, and Riku who just has something about him... These characters are voiced well too, and I think Sora's voice actor (Haley Joel Osment - The Sixth Sense, Secondhand Lions) suits him perfectly. There is also the addition of many familiar Final Fantasy characters, including Aerith and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, and Tidus and Wakka from Final Fantasy X, along with quite a few more. I thought this was an interesting thing to see, particularly for Final Fantasy fans playing the game. Most of the characters looked really good in the Disney style, and you finally had the chance to hear what the characters of FFVII and VIII might sound like when they spoke! Also most of them seemed to fit quite well in the Kingdom Hearts world and be believable. My only complaint with this is that Wakka's voice sounded odd and totally wrong (although he was supposed to be younger in this game so that could explain it). Also I don't think Tidus looked anything much like Tidus at all. I wouldn't really have missed not having those two in the game.

Music:
The music in this game is a pleasure to listen to. It's cute and can get stuck in your head quite easily! Each world not only has it's own music but it's own battle music also, which is like the world music speeded up and changed a bit. I like this because the music suits each area. A lot of the time the music for each Disney world is a mix of the original Disney music from that film, and I think this worked very successfully. The main theme of the game - Simple and Clean - is a catchy, enjoyable song. I don't think it is quite as good as some main themes from Final Fantasy games, particularly because the lyrics of the English translation don't seem to make a lot of sense in relation to the game. But aside from that, it's a pretty good song, and the version of it played at the end is especially good. I bought the soundtrack to this game and just listening to it feels like you are making that journey through the game again.

Appearance:
The FMVs in this game, though quite limited are simply beautiful and certainly match the quality of those in FFX. The graphics on the whole are well done, the character models look spot on, and all the characters and worlds have a bright, colourful quality to them. My only complaint is that Square don't seem to have spent as much time on the graphics of the locations as they did with Final Fantasy X. A lot of the areas seem very flat, especially in Wonderland where the trees almost look like they could be made of cardboard. In Final Fantasy X there were a lot of really beautiful touches like the movement of grass and I think they should have spent more time on this in Kingdom Hearts. Some of the areas just felt like boxes rather than large open worlds.

Battle System:
The battle system took me a while to get used to, as I was expecting it to be a turn based affair, similar to Final Fantasy games. I was quite surprised to find it was action based, hand to hand combat. You have commands such as Attack, Magic and Item which you pick using the D-pad. You then use X to implement these commands, eg. choose something from the list such as a potion to cure yourself with, or choose a spell to cast. This is similar to the menus in Final Fantasy battles, however while you're doing this you are being attacked by enemies all the time, so don't take too long choosing! Luckily there is a helpful function which allows you to assign magic spells to a shortcut, and then cast them by pressing L1 and the relevant button. For example you could choose to have L1 and X as cure, so you can cast it quickly on yourself when your health is getting low. You also get Summons but my main problem with these is they took so long to appear, it didn't seem worth using them most of the time. If you are used to turn based battles then this is quite overwhelming at first, but after you get used to it, it becomes easier and if you have played action games then you probably won't find this too different. It's also a lot of fun because the battles are fast paced and exciting, plus you can choose to avoid enemies by just running away from them if you don't want to fight. (With the exception of bosses obviously). Enemies usually appear in the same places, so you get used to where they are going to be. After battles enemies drop various balls, some of which restore HP, some restore MP and some give you Munny. They also drop various items. The ability learning system is interesting, you learn some abilities when you level up, others you gain from completing parts of the game or doing certain tasks. Depending on your AP (Ability points) you can only equip some of these abilities, so you can choose which are the most useful. In battles you only control Sora, Goofy and Donald fight on their own. This is easier in a way because you only have to concentrate on one character, and you get automatic help from the other two. Sometimes early on in the game you might find them dying a lot, or wasting items, in which case you can change their configuration till they act suitably. I find that they can be helpful but sometimes you don't really need them anyway.

General Gameplay:
The controls can be a little confusing at first, you use the analogue stick to walk around and the D pad to select from your command list. You access the main menu by pressing Start and you can toggle the camera view by using Select. After a while you get used to these controls though and the menu interface is quite easy to use. When controlling the character, you can walk, roll, jump and glide (although some of these you need to gain abilities for). You have to use these a lot to get to certain places and this is what gives the game more of an action element than an RPG would usually have. It's definately fun though and sometimes I'd just roll or glide around for fun, and being able to jump across roofs is great too, you just have a sense of freedom. Gameplay is fairly linear although there are some places you can visit in different orders - although you might make it harder for yourself if you do. You can talk to the people you meet, and there are lots of sidequests and extra things to do. For example you have to find trinity marks from which you gain extra items and abilities, and hunt out the 101 dalmations. There are various mini games in the Hundred Acre Wood, and extra bosses you can challenge if you wish. There's a lot to do, and I got a good 80 hours play out of this game.