We've been anticipating Kingdom Hearts for quite a long time, and after about 10 hours in, it's not shaping up to the Fun Quotient I had created in my mind. Or the Fun-to-Watch Quotient Rhonda was expecting.

I don't like RPGs. I rarely play hardcore RPGs. I'm going to assume that's my problem. But I do like story, and generally that's a huge component of RPGs. I suckled on the Kingdom Hearts hype teat purely for the Disney elements... and all criticism aside, this is the coolest Disney video game ever. The Kingdom Hearts story - a unified front of classic Disney Villains assisting an entropic force of evil in dominating the known universes - is undeniably cool. And when you do get a full-blown cutscene, the effect of Disney style seen through a video game lens is awesome.

And then the cutscene ends.

And you have to click through silent, unanimated conversations.

Nothing ruins this game more than when it reverts to lowest common denominator Read Me dialogue. Call me naive ("Naive!"), but I was expecting voice work throughout the entire game. You'll get this great movie with superb animation, and it will flow right into an in-game scene that's completely silent (well, there's probably a background loop of birds chirping.) It's very jarring to jump from cinema to mute so frequently and so inelegantly. And to further insult me, the beauty of the cutscenes are themselves ruined by subtitles... subtitles that cannot be turned off.

It would be different if the characterization sucked, but it doesn't. Example: Donald Duck is one of my favorite characters ever, because he's such a pissy little bitch. I love hearing him squawk when he gets attacked, and seeing the classic fists-a-flyin' animation when he comes back from a knockout. There's just the potential for 100% Disney Life here, so having to endure it at 0% is terrible.

Let me be honest. I have never played a Final Fantasy game. Perhaps that is also affecting my experience here. I bought this game for the Disney elements, which is the true focus here anyway. This isn't a Final Fantasy game, despite the FF character cameos. So making me wait for three hours until getting to something - anything - Disney was just rude. Also annoying was the Kingdom Hearts personality test that began the game. You get asked a bunch of personal, introspective questions right at the start, and your answers determine how the game will develop. Had I known the complex algorithms at work here, maybe I would have thought more about my answers. According to the strategy guide, you can alter Sora's (the main character) starting stats here, as well as the overall rate of progression throughout the game. My answers gave me a warrior-based Sora - which is fine - and a slow game rate, which is most decidedly not fine.

That's right. I bought a strategy guide. Because there's no way I'm going to get through this game without one. And, although I am initially put-off by the faults, I do desparately need to experience every byte that Kingdom Hearts has to offer. Why? Because being able to fight the Wonderland Card Guards, engage in crazy-ass battles with Goofy and Donald Duck, visit the Hundred Acre Wood, and "fly straight on 'til morning" is like some kind of sweet interactive Disney-based hallucination.

I generally stay away from walkthroughs and strategy guides unless I'm absolutely screwed. And even then, I'll find the walkthrough online and send Rhonda in to actually read it and give me hints (when she doesn't actually solve my problem on her own rights.) Here's what inspired the strategy guide purchase...

You see, I was in Deep Jungle. I had already found the slides for Jane's projector, and Clayton had taken an unauthorized shot at a gorilla. We're all in the tent, and we decide to go find the gorilla leader so Tarzan can ask him where Sora's friends might be. Clayton says "Great, let's go" and he runs out of the tent.

Beat.

WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE GOING? No one tells you, there's no hints, and I've already walked through every single area. At least somebody should have said, "Let's go search the swinging vine path to see if we can find Kerchak." No, the game expects you to mindlessly search through the entire level again until you find the gorilla tribe. If you're lucky, you'll head in the right direction and find them right away. Coming from the adventure game world, I would expect that Clayton would personally lead me to a new unlocked area, or that I'd have some kind of clue as to Kerchak's whereabouts. No. You must wander until you strike gold.

The bad news is, once you find Kerchak, you have to go wandering again. You end up running the full length of Deep Jungle back and forth several times for no real reason... except to artifically extend the life of the level, I suppose.

Surprisingly, I'm not as appalled by the Gummi Ship interludes as most. Yes, the game takes a right turn in Weird for them; they're not Disneyesque at all. In fact, they're full of cheesy-looking spaceships and awful pop-up. I was intending to ignore them, until I realized that you have to improve your ship's abilities as you go, or you don't get to go.

The big stumbling block is the interface. Building your Gummi Ship is a tough screen to absorb all at once. But once I figured out *how* to do it, I became much more interested in doing it, period. Right now, I have a modified Kingdom-model spaceship, which so far looks like the default blueprint with better armor and a wrap-around front porch. It's a shame the actual shooting part isn't more fun.

Combat is interesting. It certainly looks cool. Only after going through Wonderland, Deep Jungle, and the first pass in Olympus Coliseum am I really starting to understand how to fight. In the beginning, it's all button-mashing, but now that I have some slick spells and special abilities, I'm getting into the finesse of it all. One really hard bit is quickly using an item, since all the combat is real-time. Imagine being in a melee with two other party members, ten rapidly jumping and flying enemies, running with the left analog stick, and trying to select a healing Potion with the right analog stick. You need some severe brain coordination there.

What was I expecting, exactly? Full audio, first and foremost. Bigger levels, so there would be less doubling-back. Perhaps I need something more linear... or at least more assistance to keep the game moving. What I really don't like is being forcibly slowed down when I don't feel like I deserve it. It's one thing when my own stupidity makes me repeat actions.

Again, having never done a nuts-and-bolts RPG before, I don't know if I'm complaining about Kingdom Hearts or about the RPG genre. Either way, I just took Wild Arms 3 off my Want List. I guess I'm just not RPG material. I'll post more thoughts later once I finish it.