Gaming Biggest Disapointment-Game

[Charles]

[b]Kingdom Hearts[/b] is my choice. The combination of Square and Disney properties seemed like a match made in heaven. I was excited at the prospect of playing through an adventure featuring many of my most beloved characters from different mediums. Also, I was hoping for the integration of authentic Disney music with masterful Square compositions. All this taking place within some of the most interesting worlds ever created sounded too good to be true. And it was.

Although, impressively enough, Kingdom Hearts managed to capture the look of a Disney film with its amazing facial animations, and featured some great voice acting thanks to the real actors providing their support for their respective characters, nearly everything else was unacceptable. The level designs and scripting were awful. They butchered each film they were based on and forced the player to backtrack repeatedly, all the while suffering through droves of repeating enemies. Each world was extremely small; usually offering about fifteen minutes of terrain to traverse. They didn't feel magical, nor did they inspire a sense of exploration and wonderment that you would expect from worlds pulled directly from some of Disney's best films.

The Gummi Ship segments also left a lot to be desired. If you couldn't earn the ability to skip them later, I would have stopped playing the game because of them. The Sega 32X could pull them off visually, they controlled awfully, and just weren't fun. The combat too within the actual game, had its fair share of problems due to poor friendly AI. Donald and Goofy would often waste healing items and rush into their demise. It was extremely frustrating.

Hopefully Kingdom Hearts 2 turns out to be much better.