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On the face of it, Kingdom Hearts would appear to be a worthy subject for a remake. This was, after all, the unlikely crossover that spawned an enduring franchise - an action-RPG that, against the odds, managed to capture the hearts of two seemingly incompatible fanbases: Disney and Final Fantasy. By happy accident, two of the games in this three-strong package are the only two Kingdom Hearts games I haven't played, and as a fan of Kingdom Hearts 2 and PSP side-story Birth By Sleep in particular, I was looking forward immensely to tackling the game that started it all.
Four hours later, that enthusiasm had gone. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Kingdom Hearts' opening hours are dreadful, a glacial, tedious introduction that I'm amazed anyone managed to overlook a decade ago. There's a series of multiple-choice questions which seem tangential to your quest yet which can lead to you inadvertently committing to a more difficult start. That's followed by not one but two fetch quests, the latter involving some seemingly basic platforming that is rendered inordinately frustrating by one of gaming's worst ever jumps (I began to think protagonist Sora's oversized feet must be to blame). Clumsy and unresponsive, it's a grating annoyance throughout, not least in some later sections that require a level of precision the controls simply don't allow.
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