Geek Clock: Counting Down

Whoo hoo! It’s now out in Japan as of today!

Kingdom Hearts II, the sequel to one of my surprise favorite games of 2002, Kingdom Hearts. I’d almost totally ignored this game when I first heard about it because of its premise; Square Final Fantasy characters mixed with Disney characters and worlds. I thought this was headed for Disaster and that Square had made another of those missteps like when they made The Bouncer (A side scroller fighting game in the style of Final Fight or Double Dragon. Bad… Idea…) because Disney doesn’t understand video games. Every video game based on a Disney character up until this point had been one of those awful platformer style games that weren’t much fun to play at all, and were only going to appeal to kids who wanted to make Mickey or Donald jump.

Kingdom Hearts changed all that, and I suspect the reason for it was probably because Square told Disney to Stay The Hell Out Of Our Way. Disney may know how to create entertaining movies, but they didn’t understand how to make games AND tell an entertaining story. Square does. Plus it also helps that they included the magic ingredient that Disney has thus far completely failed to incorporate into their stories.

Bittersweet endings.

I won’t give away anything here for people that haven’t played the game, but I figure it must be a Japanese thing. Since they have this cultural agenda to pursue honor, that often means that a truly honorable act involves sacrifice. And for whatever reason, when you do that with characters in a story, it tends to suck you in emotionally more than a typical Disney happy ending ever could.

2005 is shaping up to be one hell of a year for RPGs. Final Fantasy XII, Rogue Galaxy, and Kingdom Hearts II VERY close on the horizon (Some people are speculating March but no official date has been givien yet). Hopefully Haley Joel Osmet will be returning to voice Sora…