KINGDOM HEARTS series has been a major hit on Playstation2 games and that is why i want to do some reviewing on its game play. This is the first installment of the series, released on 2002.

Platform:Playstation2 Personal rating: 8/10 Good

The boss battles in Kingdom Hearts are probably the highlight of the game-play. On the one hand, they're all over the map, ranging from very easy to quite difficult. In the latter cases, you will be frustrated by having to sit through battle cut-scenes again for every time you are beaten. But there is quite a bit of variety in the encounters, and some of them are so unmistakably impressive that you will go into each one eagerly rather than with dreadful expressions. The tactics you will need to use to succeed will vary quite a bit, but simple logic and good reflexes will come into play much more frequently than puzzle solving or guesswork. Actually, in a nod to the Final Fantasy game series, one perfect tactic for getting past the game's toughest battles is simply to spend a lot of time wasting small fries beforehand. Gain enough levels and those hard fights will become a breeze.

One aspect of Kingdom Hearts' game-play that does not fare nearly as well are the shooting sequences in between each of the worlds. What is all this science-fiction third-shooter stuff doing in the middle of this game? Well, maybe it's not really any more out of place than anything else, but the problem is it's just not executed effectively. The shooter stages are just pale imitations of NINTENDO's boring shooting games, and they will leave you stuck on rails for several minutes at a time as you blast away at a bunch of indistinguishable opponents. The backgrounds and abstract shapes almost make these sequences seem even more boring than they are. At any rate, your perception will be all out of whack in outer space, and for some reason you'll find yourself missing your targets often. The fact that there is a rather involved, but decidedly complicated ship design feature built into the game, letting you customize your ship or even build a new one from scratch, seems like a waste the only thing you will want to is get the shooting stages over with as quickly as possible and since they are all easy, you will.

If nothing else, the shooting stages clearly stand between you and the next chance you will have to meet one of the game's colorful characters. There is no denying that the production values of Kingdom Hearts are one of the best things about it. Though virtually, everything you'll see in the game is rendered in real time. Kingdom Hearts looks incredible, and most all of the characters--especially the Disney characters look really impressive. The Disney characters generally manage to capture the detailed facial animations and expressive movements of their cinematic counterparts--an amazing feat for a game, considering that Disney's animators are some of the best in the world.