Who would have guessed that a mix between the worlds of Final Fantasy and Disney could result in one of the most popular and enjoyable titles for Sony?
To think that Kingdom Hearts only happened because its creator, Tetsuya Nomura, overheard a conversation between Shinji Hashimoto and Hironobu Sakaguchi – two game producers responsible for Square Enix’s Final Fantasy titles – about a game that could rival Super Maio 64; they then lamented that only Disney characters would equally be as popular as Mario. Hearing this, Tetsuya Nomura volunteered to lead the project’s development and everyone was in agreement – leading to Hashimoto to pitch the idea to Disney and have it greenlit. And thus, Kingdom Hearts was born! Take note that was a chance encounter in an elevator, so hopefully future game developers won’t be waiting inside of one in the hopes of becoming the next big thing.
Nobody can deny its success as the franchise has managed to sell 24 million units across its 8 titles. Although it’s weird that there were a couple of entries that made its way to platforms such as the Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, that didn’t stop people from playing them.
It has been nearly 13 years since the series first game was initially released ni Japan, and now we have to wait until January next year for the 3rd main entry. That’s a long time if you ask me.
So why are people still so excited for it? It’s because Kingdom Hearts managed to combine two things that just about everyone loves, which then ended up giving us more memories than we could ask for. A 3D third-person action-adventure game can only work if it has good fighting mechanics, interesting characters, a beautiful soundtrack, and a decent plot. Although the story can get very convoluted, the other three aspects more than make up for it.
The basic concept is that you play as a young boy named Sora who has been bestowed the mystical weapon known as the Keyblade. With the help of Donald and Goofy, Sora must wield the Keyblade and travel around the different Disney worlds to prevent their utter destruction from beings known as the Heartless. That’s as simple of a synopsis as I can give as going over everything would just overwhelm the readers.
What I’m sure everyone is excited about are the new Disney characters and worlds that we get to visit. We already know that we get to meet Woody and Buzz from Toy Story, but who else do we get to see? Well, judging by the fact that Disney already owns the Star Wars franchise, there’s a very big chance that we might encounter Storm Troopers, X-Wings or possibly even Darth Vader! Doesn’t that give any of you goosebumps?!
And let’s not forget the Final Fantasy elements. We’ll most likely get to see a ton of cool new spells and I’m sure that they’re all going to look very good. Previous games also contained popular Final Fantasy characters such as Auron, Cloud, and Squall, so it’s possible that we’ll encounter Noctis and the gang as well. Spoiler warning – I’m hoping there’s going to be another Sephiroth fight and I also hope that it’s just as hard as the ones in the previous games.
Also, I know that some people hated the Gummi Ship sections from the previous titles, but hopefully Kingdom Hearts 3 added a couple of improvements to simplify the construction process. But then again, we’re not entirely sure if Square decides to bring it back.
Lastly, I’m sure almost all of us can agree that one of the things that made Kingdome Hearts the masterpiece that it was is the soundtrack. Beautiful compositions can make any game feel immersive and considering that it’s Disney and Square Enix that’s in charge, we’ll be hearing a ton of amazing new pieces.
I know that this is a bit presumptuous, but I have a feeling that it’s already going to be a huge contender for game of the year 2019. For now, all we can do is wait until we can get our hands on it.
