Lunar: The Silver Star review

 Lunar Silver Star Story first debuted on the Sega CD. While the Sega CD system didn't last very long, Lunar did manage to get quite a following. Unfortunately, because the Sega CD user base wasn't large, Lunar was overlooked by several gamers. The game had a release on the very short lived Sega Saturn, but again, never reached audiences. In 1999 Lunar finally reached a large audience. The Playstation. With several changes and updates from the original Sega CD version to make the story more complete and satisfying.

Lunar Silver Star Story Complete concerns itself with Alex. He one day dreams of being a Dragonmaster. Just like his hero, Dyne. He figures he'll just have to keep dreaming, though. Until his friend Ramus has a plan to go into the White Dragon cave and get a hold of the White Dragon Diamond. Finally, a chance for Alex to go on an adventure. But it ends up becoming much bigger than he ever dreamed.

For the most part, Lunar Silver Star Story has a cliched overly done storyline. Despite that, however, it is one of the best in the genre because it has a fantastic cast of characters who are all well developed, a good sense of humor, one of the best villains in video game history as well as a very emotional story. All these things make you forget the cliched storyline and make it something enjoyable and memorable. The story also has a few really great looking anime cinematics and some incredibly good voice acting to help flesh out the humor and wit. It also helps that the dialog is extremely well written. Put simply, the story is presented very well.

The gameplay is dated, but that's to be expected for a game originally released in 1992. Lunar has a straightforward combat system. It's the simple turn based fare you've seen in dozens of RPGs. You'll select an action for every character to do and then watch the battle play out as your enemies and you take turns. Every character can either attack, use special techniques unique to only them use items and run away, etc. Battles are contact based. That doesn't mean enemies will simply let you waltz by. Many enemies upon seeing you will give chase.

Lunar is by no means a complicated game. Every character gains magic through levels (save for Alex who will get a few spells from meeting certain objectives in the story) and has their own unique magic. For example, Nash is the only character who can cast Thunder Magic. There are a few tidbits to the battle system that help flesh it out and keep it from being overly repetitive. For one, characters who use staves can use them to cast spells that they otherwise might not be able to cast. There's also a huge emphasis on strategy here. Lunar is not an easy game by any stretch of the imagination. Especially up against the bosses. You'll find you have to move your characters all over the field and heal every turn to keep yourself a float. To make matters even more difficult, you only have a limited number of items you can carry and on top of that, items at the market are quite expensive and monsters don't drop a lot of money. So even though battles are contact based, it's probably best to fight as many as you can. The only major problem with Lunar's battle system is that battles aren't quick. Even normal battles can last for several minutes because of having to heal yourself constantly. For the most part, though, the trip through the game is very rewarding.

Visually, Lunar is a very colorful, artistic looking, smooth running game. It doesn't push the Playstation to its limits, but it does manage to be a good game nonetheless. The artistic design is incredibly well done, though. So are the character portraits and animated cutscenes. It's actually a very beautiful looking game, but it looks like a smooth over sixteen bit game too. Luckily, this won't bother most gamers.

It sounds pretty good. As mentioned before, the voice acting is some of the best in the industry. Many of the tunes are quite catchy (particularly the world map and battle themes). They're short tracks, though, so they loop real soon, which makes much of the music quite repetitive. In the long run, though, you're getting quite a bit.

Lunar Silver Star Story Complete originally came with a lot of extras. A soundtrack CD filled with the best tracks, a cloth map, a making of CD and a hardcover instruction booklet that even included a sample of the strategy guide made by Working Designs themselves. It's quite the collector's item to have.

Lunar Silver Star Story Complete is a fantastic RPG that despite being released on the Playstation, was still fairly overlooked. It does, however, retain a strong audience. A fine game where the effort of the creators really shows through fantastic writing, a well crafted story and some of the most well developed characters to grace the genre.

Grandia review

 Grandia is a great game all around. If not one of the best, it is definitely one of the most fun RPG's I've ever played.

The first thing which strikes my memory, like so many other games, is the characters. They are good, fun characters. If nothing else, Grandia does make you care about them and what happens to them. Unlike almost every other RPG ever made, there really aren't any dark, brooding characters, or even evil ones (even the bad guys weren't very evil seeming), and I know that will put a lot of people off. Justin, the main character, is a total jerk. He's a nice guy at heart, but just a little clueless. There is some voice acting, which is entertaining, and some of it is okay. I like it well enough to keep it. It set the characters well. There is a little love story, too, which is corny, but it fits well with the rest of the game. Nothing in this game is very serious.

Except the combat. The fighting system in Grandia is awesome. It is still turn-based, but instead of just standing in a row, you're characters actually move around, which is important against many bosses and special attacks. It uses a timing system with an action bar to determine who goes when. When you hit enemies, or are hit yourself, you move back on the bar. This is important for strategic reasons. Basically, you can do more damage with a combo than a critical attack, but a critical moves them further back on the bar. The special moves and magic system is very well done. You level up specific moves and spells by using them. This makes some of your early moves devastating even into the later parts of the game.

On a similar note, the experience system is one of the best in the industry (whether or not it is innovative or original). There are standard level ups, running on the normal experience system. Then Grandia goes the extra mile and adds in the specific weapon and magic class levels. When you use a specific type of weapon, you level up in that specific weapon, getting a small stat boost and allowing you access to new skills. This makes it necessary to switch up what kind of weapons each character uses. Magic also levels up in this same way, and to get access to new spells, especially the ones which are mixes of elements, you will have to mix-up what kinds of magic you use. It is a fun system to work with.

Grandia has a fairly simplistic, happy plot. It is not unique by any right. I guess it kind of is by its lightness. It really is cheery, and a total departure from dark, depressing insight into the human soul type stories (did someone just mention Xenogears?). You spend a large portion of your time on side-quests and adventures which have nothing to do with the overall plot, but that was okay, because you are a young, aspiring adventurer, after all. That, and the combat system is great, so fighting lots of monsters is fun. The main story is nothing special, but it is interesting. I did find myself wanting to know what happens. Despite the general and generic plot, individual events and occurrences are still exciting now and then.

The graphics aren't anything special, like most Playstation games that are three years old. The characters themselves are well observed, done with a high level of detail, and the character dialogue portraits are neat. Every character has two or three, expressing different emotions. Again, nothing outstanding or brilliant, but a nice touch. In general, the dungeons themselves and the enemy monsters don't look so great. But then again, I've never really cared much about graphics in RPGs. Your call.

There are a couple things which really makes Grandia stand out above the rest of the crowd. For one thing, there are no random encounters. Nobody likes those. There are still wandering monsters, but you can see them on screen before you have to fight them, and they are avoidable. I thought that was absolutely awesome. The music in Grandia was excellent. I think it is the absolute best soundtrack on a RPG so far. I absolutely loved it. People who weren't watching would occasionally glance in to see if I was just listening to classical music. That is a bit of an overstatement, but still.

All in all, Grandia is great. It is an epic. It only took me 40 hours to beat. Nowhere near this 90 hour stuff the other reviewers were talking about. I did almost everything too, including talking to everybody in town three times in a row (one of Grandia's more annoying points). The dungeons are well designed, if short, and easy. I had a more difficult time fighting wandering monsters than some bosses (mainly because you can hit them so many times they never get to move). Anyway, Grandia is definitely one of the most fun RPGs ever, even if it isn't one of the technical best. And it has Puffy. All RPG fans should pick it up. And beat it. It is great.

Kingdom Hearts review

 Yeah, I know "adequate" isn't exactly an attention grabber for a review but I couldn't think of another way to describe this game. However, I will elaborate.

The game's plot revolves around multiple dimension-like worlds in the Disney and Final Fantasy universe. Kind of like a Mickey Mouse version of the show "Sliders". Anyway, you have to travel to all of these worlds looking for your standard bad guys the Heartless. Your main character, Sora, holds the key to defeating the Heartless and setting things right again. I'm not kidding, he actually uses a weapon called a "keyblade". And you thought the gunblade was original. In your travels you'll go to Agrabah (home of Aladdin), Wonderland, Neverland, Olympus, Tarzan's jungle, and others. All the while encountering critters from Disney cartoons and Final Fantasy games.

Being a Final Fantasy fan, the major draw for me in this game was seeing Final Fantasy characters from Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 10. Unfortunately, this is one aspect of the game that disappoints. Cameos are limited. I haven't played through the entire game but it seems that the only characters playing significant roles are Leon (aka Squall from FF8), Cid (from FF7), and a little bit from Yuffie (FF7) and Aerith (Aeris/FF7). Sure old favorites Cloud and Sephiroth make appearances, but they don't play major roles in the game. And in the end, you could easily replace them with normal, original NPCs. Square's number one reason for including them is to pander to the Final Fantasy crowd. Mission accomplished, I bought it.

You'll mostly be encountering Disney characters. Disney NPCs, Disney party members, even Disney summon monsters. For me, all that Disney stuff would make me vomit, but it isn't as childish as you would think. Donald and Goofy provide you with battle support and they're good for a laugh in cutscenes. On the downside, all of the worlds I've seen so far are Disney worlds, nothing from Final Fantasy, or at least anything original - except for the first island you start on, and that reminds me of Besaid from FFX.

The voice acting in the game is short. Most of what you see are dialogue boxes or speech bubbles instead of actual voices. But the voices that are in the game are excellent. Square and Disney actually hired some professional talent for a few of the non-Disney characters. And even the Disney characters are voiced by either the original voice actor from their respective movies, or the actor from the TV series spinoff (in a few cases). The dialogue is a little choppy in some areas, but it's not as ridiculous as some of the translated dialogue in other games.

Play control. Jeez. Controlling your character is relatively easy. Battles are a little tougher because of the battle menu, but they do provide a few shortcut buttons for magic, etc. The absolute worst thing is the platform jumping. Between the camera angles and your nitwit sidekicks, it's difficult to land some jumps. Donald and Goofy are constantly in the way, they follow you around like the characters in Final Fantasy 8 do, unfortunately you can't walk through them. I had to push Goofy off a ledge a few times just to see where I was going. They do add a remedy for the problems - a first person "look around" view. It helps to see around and to line yourself up with a jump, but it doesn't help if you turn the camera around to look for a platform only to see that annoying duck standing in your way. And in battle they were basically useless for me. After playing Devil May Cry, I'm good enough with melee sword combat that I don't need the backup of a giant dog with a shield and a duck who can't hit a monster the size of a building with a fire spell.

The minor problems aside, the game has its strengths. The story and the cutscenes make you feel like you're actually controlling a Disney movie - not necessarily a bad thing. And the freedom of movement in battles was a nice change from turn-based Final Fantasy combat. It's no Final Fantasy X, but Kingdom Hearts ranks as one of the best RPGs I've ever played.

Pros:
-Great battle system
-Top notch voice acting
-Music is good and it sets the mood in certain areas
-Original and engaging story

Cons:
-Donald and Goofy get in the way
-Other members of your party aren't very helpful in battle
-Final Fantasy angle not as prominant as many would like

Overall I gave it four stars taking into consideration the flaws. If you're looking for an original RPG, I would recommend this game. But if you're looking for a Final Fantasy clone, this isn't it. Otherwise I think everyone should give this game a shot. Rent it first, and if you like it then buy it.

Kingdom Hearts II review

 Like most people, I was hooked on the Disney-meets-Final Fantasy game known as Kingdom Hearts, which recieved such a huge cult following. And I was feverishly waiting for the sequel to come out, which has been considered as one of the most highly-anticipated games of the PS2.

Now that it's here, and after playing through it, let me give my thoughts on the aspects of this game:

Storyline:

The game picks up where the Chain of Memories left off as a mysterious being Roxas (Jesse McCartney)unknowingly has some sort of connection to the Keyblade bearer, Sora, who has been kept in a slumber capsule along with Donald and Goofy for almost a year, now. The first 2-3 hours of the game you'll play as Roxas, leading to flashback scenes of the first game and the COM games, which is good news for the newcomers wanting to play this game. Afterwards, the game picks up to speed as you finally play as Sora, back on his feet to find Riku and King Mickey...and Kairi, as well. At the same time, however, he has to defend the worlds by Heartless and strange creatures known as Nobodies led by a strange black cloaked group called Organization XIII.

Mickey, in particular, plays a larger and more awesome role in this game, given the fact that earlier he wears the same black cloak of the Organization.

After playing the game here, I can well say that the storyline is the game's strongest point overall. It asks the lingering questions that were running through our own minds as we played the first game. And best of all, it's all made so we can never constantly expect what's going to happen next.

Graphics:

A vast improvement over the first; more solid animations, and lesser "cheating" facial animations as well. I was shocked to see the game through my own eyes at how excellent Square Enix has done. The camera's problems, in particular, have been fixed to perfection, thereby, moving the control of the camera from the L2 and R2 buttons to the R3 analog stick, giving you the chance to move it whereever you want it to.

Levels:

There are 15 levels as followed:

Twighlight Town
Hollow Bastion (returning level from the first game)
The Land of Dragons
Beast's Castle
Olympus Coliseum (returning level)
Disney Castle
Timeless River
Atlantica (returning level)
Port Royal
Agrabah (returning level)
Halloween Town (returning level)
Pride Land
100 Acre Wood (returning level)
Space Paranoids
The World That Never Was

A few of the worlds here have returned from the first game, but are entirely redone so that they won't play exactly like the first game. Atlantica was strangely turned into a mini-game world, but Olympus Coliseum and Halloween Town are a vast improvement, because they follow directly from their own movies. 100 Acre Wood's book makes a comeback as you fetch the torn pages for it once again. Hallow Bastion becomes a BraveHeart-esque level and answers most of the questions overall from the first game. In addition, Mulan (The Land of Dragons) and Beauty and the Beast (Beast's Castle) recieve their own worlds, and surprisingly, there's a Steamboat Wille-themed world, Timeless River, which adds very well to how Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and even Sora would look like in the 1930s Disney cartoons. This ties in with the Disney Castle world, which Sora will meet Queen Minnie for the first time.

The biggest dissapointment is the Lion King-themed world, Pride Land, which grows so annoying even after the first few minutes. The best level of this whole game, however, is the Tron-themed level, Space Paranoids. This ties in wholly with the movie itself, and looks downright amazing. The trio, in particular, get to wear the cool, blue-lighted suits you see those people wear in the movie itself.

Music/Voices:

The music is on par with the first game. Some music, in the returning worlds, is still the same (except Antlantica), while the rest recieves some new orchestrations which are absolutely superb. There's plenty more where that came from.

The voices hit more than miss. The roles of Haley Joel Osment, Tony Anselmo, and Bill Farmer as Sora, Donald, and Goofy have returned, as well as the rest of the cast in the returning levels. (I still couldn't believe they didn't get Robin Williams to do the voice of Genie, and have to dig up Homer Simpson.) The Pride Land level has the worst voices overall with almost no depth from the cast in the movie whatsoever; Port Royal doesn't have the same movie cast either, but the guys here sound exactly like the movie's cast. I was really shocked.

The most surprising roll, however comes from Saruman the White himself, Christopher Lee as Diz (aka Ansem the Wise--you'll find out soon enough), the main man of Hollow Bastion. When I first watched his role as Diz, I was blown away at how well he delivered his preformance; I kept asking myself, "How the f*** did they get him to do this?!"

Gameplay/Lifespan

The gameplay, too, hits more than misses. You'll have more combo attacks than the first game, and you'll be able to do "reaction commands" with the triangle button (which seems awful similar to the context-sensitive actions in Conker's Bad Fur Day). The Drive Command is a nice touch, too; You'll mostly need it when you're fighting a boss. In some areas, when Sora bites the dust in some of the bosses, you'll play as Mickey, trying to bring Sora back to life.

The biggest flaw, however, comes from the difficulty presented in this game. What made the first game so difficult was the camera's issues which make it so hard to see where the heck you're going. Now that they're fixed, you can hack and slash anywhere you want to, which makes it a lesser challenge than before.

Luckily, thanks to the addition of an Expert mode, as well as making yourself having to come back to the worlds you've already open paths to for "second quests", this game is almost as long as the first; The first took 30 hours for me to beat and this game took me almost 29 hours. It's safe for me to say, "Close enough."

Overall:

Despite the difficulty flaws, you'll definitely have a fun time with this game. I certainly enjoyed it and I'd say KHII is definitely better than the first, despite a few of the lackluster reviews on some online sites.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days review

 First off, just to clear up any confusion, the title of this game is actually pronounced "Kingdom Hearts Three Five Eight Days Over Two" weird right? Anyways, I have not yet beaten the game but I have played it enough to make a substantial review. As we all know the game started with Kingdom Hearts in 2003. About a year later they made a game for Game Boy Advanced called Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. The Story of Sora going to Castle Oblivion, losing his memories and having to sleep for a year to regain them. This is also where we first get introduced to Organization XIII. The worst part of Chain of Memories was the card based battles system, the best part was getting to play as Riku after beating it as Sora. Then there's Kingdom Hearts II, that picks up a year later with the last days of Roxas, Sora's Nobody, and then Sora's awakening. Now, a lot of Kingdom Hearts fans had a few questions as to why organization XIII only had 8 members in KH2, and why Sora awoke like he did in the place he did. Realizing that not many people played KH:COM, let alone had a GBA, they re-made the game for PS2, naming it "Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories". Now, many people are not too found of the card-based battle system, and trust me, neither am I. But COM is an essential part of the KH franchise and it is very important any true fan plays it to understand the story in it's true depth. Knowing this, they made sure to make the PS2 version much easier than the GBA version, it includes reaction commands, extra cards, 3D environment with camera controls similar to that of KH2, the ability to dodge roll automatically, and the option to choose between Beginner, Standard, and Proud mode.

Now that that's out of the way, I shall introduce KH358/2D. This game starts 7 days after Roxas' birth (when Sora stabbed himself with the dark keyblade) and takes place through the events of Chain of Memories, where 5 of the Orgnization Members (Vexen, Larxene, Marluxia, Zexion, and Lexaeus) all die at the hands of Sora nd Riku, and the game continues to play out for the whole year that Sora is asleep and ends near the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. With the final boss of the game being Riku. Go figure. This makes sense seeing how it was him who brought Roxas to DiZ when they put him in the fake Twilight Town in the beginning of KH2. But I digress. This game will introduce you to a new Organization member, Xion. The 14th member. Who can strangely also wield the keyblade and has connections somehow to Sora and Kairi. When you start the game it puts you through a lengthy hour long tutorial that teaches you how to play the game. You go on about 7 or so tutorial mission learning the basics of game play, and all about missions, and collecting hearts for the Organization. Out of the entire franchise, I would consider this game to be the hardest of the all, game play wise. The buttons are limited, so the camera controls are extremely limited. You can change this later, however. But it will make your shortcut window harder to access. In the previous games one could use the D-pad to access the command window, however in this game you need that to move. So instead you must use the X button to choose between attack, magic, and items. Now, your supply of healing items at your disposal and how many you can pick up on the field are both annoyingly limited. Whereas in the other games you could collect munny and buy potions then equip as many to your characters are there were item slots for them, in this game everything you have and/or do is based off a Tetris like panel grid. If you wanna level up, you must take a leve up pennel and put it on the grid. Wanna use fire magic? Maybe you wanna have a hi-potion at your despinse to heal up with? Again, must equip them to the panel grid. And please note, the grid is not unlimited. You only get so many squares to place panels in. weapons, abilities, items, magic, leveling up, these things all depend on the panel system. However, all is not lost. There are these items called "slot releasers" which open up more empty squares on the panel grid for you to equip panels on. Some panels, however, take up many squares. These are called link panels, there are used to further develop your character. For example, there is a link panel that allows you to attach up to 4 level up panels to it. Each of these levels is doubled. So instead of gaining four levels, you actually gain eight, along with any other level up panels you have equipped. With weapon panels you can link ability, power, or guard panels to unlock a hidden ability, raise your strength, defense, or magic. One of the things you'll notice right away when doing this is that all the weapon panels tend to favor one attribute over another. You will either find yourself killing off heartless pretty fast but losing health even faster, or you will take forever to kill them but also stay alive longer. As of right now, I have a strength power of 93, with a defense of 32. Explain that one. Trying to evenly balance them comes with a heavy price. The other issue with the weapons is that they all tend to favor one type of combat. One weapon is extremely useful if you fighting everything in midair, another is only useful if your feet never leave the ground. There are many more though, and I have not yet made it far enough to unlock the more balanced and powerful weapons, so I cannot yet say how the gameplay progresses near the end.

The battle system is no different than the norm. Run up to the heartless and press A to attack. However, the Heartless in this game are much smarter than their predecessors. Not only do they come in vast numbers and gang up one you, but a grand majority of the regular Heartless (not the bosses) have anywhere from 2 to 4 health bars. You will soon find yourself adopting a "hit and run" strategy, especially in the missions where you fight alone. It is almost kind of sad that the 5 Organization members of castle oblivion are short lived. As far as I remember the only time they assist you (or don't) is in the tutorial missions. You will soon figure out that most of your missions will be with Axel or Xion. With the occasional other member thrown in. however, the game does make up for this with Mission Mode, and I will get into that later. When it comes to difficult combat in the series, this game takes the cake. I remember I was only about a half hour into the game and I was surrounded by 7 Possessor Heartless who leeched onto me and sapped away my HP while Axel sat there picking his nose. I died exactly 8 times before killing them all off. According to the strategy guide, the game will insult you as well. If you chose Standard or Proud mode and you die too many times in one mission, the game will finally ask you if you would like to lower the difficulty level. One thing you may find yourself hardly ever using is the magic. As there is no surefire way to ensure your spells will hit the target, you will find yourself easily frustrated as a precious fire or blizzard spell floats right past your target. Unless you can master your aim, you'd be better off saving valuable panel room by just avoiding magic altogether. However, some missions require you have magic to complete them 100%. So I would say equip it for the mission, then un-equip it after.

The game progression is based off a series of missions. In order to move the story along, you must only do the mission marked with a keyblade and then choose "advance" to move on. However, moving on too quickly can result in an early and easy death. It is highly recommended that you at least try to do every mission Saïx has available for you before progressing. The game progression goes by days. Each time you do a mission another day goes by. This will continue until you reach 358. I am on day 93. This is not completely linear though. Sometimes a cutscene goes over a many day period. There is one instance where Roxas faints and stays asleep for 3 weeks time. On another instance the games skips from day 57 to day 93 without any explanation in between. The game offers you the choice to go back and redo missions you've already done, in case you may have missed something. You can only do this from the Organization castle. But that's not the only thing. Equipping panels, game configuration, saving your progress, and viewing your diary are all limited to inside the castle. These are all things you cannot do while on the field in a mission. Speaking of on the field, I forgot to mention that you are limited to haw many items you can pick up while on a mission. In the beginning, Roxas can only pick up 5 at a time. In order to pick up more you must equip a backpack panel to your level grid.

As for the cutscenes and graphics, they are as good as they are gunna get for a DS system. You will soon find that most of the cutscenes consist of text boxes and you will be doing a lot of reading. Very few cutscenes have voices. Hardly any.

Now let me talk about mission mode. On the title screen you get 2 choices. These are Story Mode, and Mission Mode. Mission Mode allows you to go through and replay any of the missions you have unlocked in Story Mode in an attempt to earn points and crowns which you can later trade into to Moogle Shop for prizes. But that's not all. Here's the bonus. Mission Mode allows you to playa s any one of the 13 Organization XIII members. And just as Roxas' keyblae changes its looks with new panels, so does the other Organization Members weapons. Many people hated that Marliuxia had a pink scythe. Well, just switch a few panels and presto! Really cool looking blue scythe with extra spikes coming out of the top. Again, that's not all. As the game progresses there are 6 characters you can unlock for mission mode by accomplishing certain tasks in story mode. These characters include Sora, Donald, Goofy, King Mickey, Riku, and Xion.

I know it felt like I had a lot of complaints, but the game is not all bad. Once you get the hang of it the game is pretty easy to handle. The biggest issue is getting the hang of it. The game is rated E10+ for a reason. Not just because of the fantasy violence and dark storyline, but also because there's no way in hell anyone less than 10 years of age is going to understand how to play it. They would die within the first 10 minutes. The game itself however, is very fun. The story is deep and intriguing. The characters are loveable. The game play is challenging enough that you won't rush through it in a day, but not so challenging that you give up. The panel system, annoying as it may be, is also another way of testing a true RPG gamer's skills at strategy. And the Mission system promises a lengthy game time aside form the main storyline.

Regardless of the few minor annoyances, this game quickly becomes very addicting like the rest of them. But unlike the rest of them, this one presses you to move forward and try hard, rather than just handing the victory to you like the other's did. But then again that could just be my gameplay skills. I actually seem to have forgotten what it was like the first time I ever played any of them. But I do recall there hasn't been a single Kingdom Hearts game where I haven't dies at least 3 times my first time through the story. Overall though, this is a very good game that will force you to place everything you know about strategy games on the line and then some. As it is not all fighting. Sometimes you must sneak past characters or follow them, keeping them in your line of vision, but staying out of theirs. There are also missions that require you to investigate new areas, and others that require you to collect emblems. Another good thing about this game is the worlds. While there are very few worlds, consisting only of The World That Never Was, Twilight Town, Agrabah, Beast's Castle, Halloween Town, Olympus Coliseum, Wonderland, and Neverland, these worlds are mainly repeats of their KH and KH2 counterparts to an extent. Many of them contain extra areas and remade versions of old areas to explore. For example, Beast's Castle consists entirely of everything it does in KH2, plus a secret hallway leading from the courtyard that allows you to drop down into the main entrance hallway from a hole in the ceiling. Also, with Agrabah, it looks and feels almost the same as the Agrabah in KH1, with the exception of the Cave of Wonders, which is absolutely nothing like it is in the first 2 games. Also, the music. I always have and always will love the music in the Kingdom Hearts games, which is why I downloaded the soundtracks. Even though most of the world music is recycled from the first 2 games, there are a few new musical tracks for the game itself, along with a brand new theme and battle music for Neverland.

Like I said before, the cons I mentioned earlier are only minor setbacks to an overall extraordinary game. Do not let the confusing controls scare you, at first it may seem like hell, but after awhile you find yourself getting really into it. You may find that the controls are actually less complex than the PS2.

Overall I'd say this game deserves an 8/10 rating and is absolutely a must-have for any Kingdom Hearts fan, especially those wishing to fill in the blanks of the story.