With the announcement of Kingdom Hearts
III at E3 2013, my passion for the Kingdom Hearts franchise became wholly
renewed. I felt the time was right to jump back into the series, especially
with the news that an HD collection would be on its way as well. In
preparation, I replayed both the original Kingdom Hearts and the PS2 version of
Chain of Memories titled Re:Chain of Memories. After getting the Limited
Edition of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix (stylized as Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5
ReMIX) on the day it came out, I began playing it, but was unable to finish it
until recently due to college getting in the way. Since completing it, I found
this collection to be very good, but overall a mixed bag.
The first game on the collection is a
full HD remaster of Kingdom Hearts Final Mix. This is a truly momentous occasion,
as it marks the first time this version of Kingdom Hearts saw a release in
North America. Going through Final Mix is well worth it, as there are new
cutscenes to watch, new keyblades to earn, new (and recolored) Heartless to
fight and all new challenges to face. Playing this version in HD is also a step
up from the original version, as the camera system is better, now being bound
to the right stick rather than the shoulder buttons, the menu system is
improved thanks to summons having a dedicated spot on the menu and introducing Reaction
Commands from Kingdom Hearts II eases battle and world interaction. Overall,
playing the game is less awkward, which makes it a lot more fun this time
around. On top of that, the graphics are much nicer to look at, as they are
more appealing to the eye than the original PS2 era graphics; this is due to
the fact that they somehow lost the game, so they painstakingly recreated the
graphics from the ground up and in the end there is no noticeable difference in
the way characters move, they are just nicer looking. However, it is unfortunate
that they couldn’t update the face textures during certain cutscenes, which
makes it a bit distracting to see something like that so out of place with the
rest of the animations. What makes up for this a bit is the new orchestral
score for the game, which sounds more pleasant to the ear than the original
version, which was created on a tone generator.
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| Pictured: The improved menu system and vastly improved graphics. |
Next up is a port of Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories. While playing, I noticed some minor improvements, such as being
able to collect all of the cards from the Japanese version and fixing a
previous translation error, so now the Lethal Frame Sleight is spelled properly
(however, they did manage to misspell “totaling” as “totalling”, so go figure).
Even then, there are no graphical enhancements to speak of and the card battle
system is still as annoying as it was before. The only incentive to replay this
game here is to learn the story and see the introduction of Organization XIII,
which is very essential to understanding later games in the series.
Lastly, we have (most of) the cutscenes
from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (read as Three Five Eight Days Over Two). These
cutscenes combined are nearly three hours in length and are good for reminding
people who have played the game of what happens, as well as see new content,
without actually having to replay the game. As someone who was experiencing
this story for the first time, I’m glad that I was able to fill in a gap of
Kingdom Hearts knowledge by seeing what happens without having to buy the game, though I am aware that
some context is lost in the simplification of certain scenes as text summaries
which scroll by. Also, they look fantastic since they have the same visual
quality as Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, but the story gets a little aggravating when
the same three characters (Axel, Roxas and Xion) constantly go to the top of a
clock tower to eat Sea Salt ice cream.
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| Axel in glorious HD! |
Overall, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix is
a very good package. Kingdom Hearts has never looked or played better than in
this collection and is the quintessential way to play the first game in the
series. Re:Chain of Memories is a little annoying for returning players though
and 358/2 Days is an essential story that unfortunately feels robbed of some important
context. If you are a veteran of Kingdom Hearts, pick up this collection to at
least play Kingdom Hearts Final Mix. If you are a newcomer however, this is the
perfect way to start getting into the series.
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