One of these days, I’ll probably replay Kingdom Hearts. In part because of the recent Final Fantasy kick, in part because it’s been around a decade since I last played it (and II and Chain Of Memories). If and when I do revisit it, I wonder how it’ll hold up, both as a game over twenty years old and as a story being played by a man in his thirties.
Kingdom Hearts is a very silly game. It’s a world where a spiky-haired kid fights monsters called the Heartless with a key-shaped sword. He teams up with Donald Duck and Goofy and they go to various Disney worlds, fighting the Heartless and sometimes teaming up with Final Fantasy characters like Cloud and Squall. There’s a lot of talk of Darkness and Hearts and Mickey Mouse is a badass. Like I said, it’s very silly.
It’s also one that I hold dear (and not just because the main songs are absolutely fantastic) and as silly and melodramatic as it is, I don’t know if I can criticize it for its corny earnestness. Can I justify my affection for the games all these years later? I don’t know! I don’t know if it’s a good game! The new one in 2019 had gameplay that felt over a decade old! But I remember Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II being really fun in their day. They’re action hack-and-slashes with light RPG elements, though lacking in the developments and polish more recent games in the genre have made. Of course, gameplay is one thing, story is another.
Because I don’t know if Kingdom Hearts’ story is actually good either. Is mixing Disney and Final Fantasy brilliant or stupid? On the one hand, taking what exists in the popular consciousness as ‘childish,’ like Donald Duck and Peter Pan and Ariel, and giving them the gravitas to fight physical manifestations of evil is super compelling. There’s something there about the stories of one’s youth being able to stand up against the darkness, about how evil is not so great as to be able to overpower the simple axioms of (Disneyfied) fairy tales.
On the other hand, Mickey Mouse being a badass king is really, really silly when you look too closely and the games’ naiveté wears thin after a while. The story is a storm of clichés and they work well enough in context, but maybe revisiting it will show the point where the returns begin to diminish, where the narrative cracks begin to form. The Final Fantasy, JRPG approach to Disney can work, but does it reach its breaking point by the time Kingdom Hearts II gets going with its Nobodies? To say nothing of the myriad, labyrinthine sequels that layer a straightforward world with a wealth of complex lore and nonsensical developments (seriously, by the time I jumped back in in III there were way, way too many people named Ansem running around).
But hell if I don’t still love the games. Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, and the interequel Chain of Memories are games I want to replay not to see if they’re still good, but because they’re ones I look back on with fondness and I want to experience them all over again. Like a guilty pleasure, I know they’re probably not as great as I thought they were when I was fifteen, but I don’t doubt I’ll still really like them when I play them again. They have their flaws, but even though I could dissect them, I don’t know if I could be convinced they’re bad games.
Because sometimes, it’s fun to enjoy something without thinking too hard about something. To know it has flaws and acknowledge them, but still let it be fun for what it is. Because Mickey Mouse being a badass is undoubtedly silly, but somehow, Kingdom Hearts makes it work.
Essays, Not Rants! 