Personally I hope that Sora, Riku, and Kairi don’t appear for long in the third game. Unfortunately the series seems to be completely unlike the Final Fantasy series. While this fact is indeed true, I will try to compare and contrast as well as I possibly can.

To begin with, they both have you starting off with relatively unfamiliar characters. None of the characters are ever the same, except for boss names and magic, in any Final Fantasy game, which adds an air of mystery as to what kind of storyline the game could have and what kind of weapons could you possibly wield. In Kingdom Hearts, however, you start the first game with a small boy and play around on an island until you have to fight. In the second game, however, you play as a character you already know, but he doesn’t remember anything about the past, except for his dreams, which makes you think that he is a relatively new character until he has yet more dreams. The second game has you start off thinking, “Where am I? Why am I here?” until you realize that you have to play as Sora again.

While Kingdom Hearts combines many different characters from different games, Final Fantasy creates completely new ones and forces you to run the gauntlet with unfamiliar people doing unfamiliar tasks. KH also is too familiar with the gamer, who has supposedly played the first game (which I unfortunately was unable to do) and all you do is mash X repeatedly while saying to yourself, “Aren’t keys usually blunt?” The basic plotline is just that; basic. You hit X and you destroy heartless.

I may be unqualified to talk about FF and KH because I have only partially played FFVII and almost beaten FFIII (Nintendo DS), and also only partially played KHI and beaten KHII, but I can get the general gist of both games. I do not believe that any thing used in Kingdom Hearts I or II can be used in the third game. The first two did the same worlds with little variation, and over used any and all plots. On the contrary, almost anything from any FF game (except 7) can be used as they are all different. What the programmers need to understand is that they need to break down old barriers they set up with the first two games, set high standards for the third, and then break those.

Again I have rambled on and off the topic, so please enjoy my ramblings and I hope I haven’t offended any freaky fan-kids.

Thanks to KingdomHearts3.net reader Kyo for this submission!