LogFAQs > #986292701

The Moment: Destiny Islands
Admittedly, Im stretching the definition of the concept of a moment here, but I think its still in keeping with the sort of thing Im trying to do with these sections of the project. And again, its my project, shut up.

Anyhoo, tempting though it was to choose the final Riku fight here, given that I still have the majority of its preceding cutscene memorized due to the amount of times I had to watch it after deaths, the temptation was greater to sing the praises of the best prologue Ive ever played. That may seem like an insane claim, as I know there are plenty of people who outright hate the beginning section of KH1. But Ive never encountered another intro thats as effective as this one when it comes to teaching you pretty much everything you need to know about its game without resorting to cheap, dull, dry tutorials. Its show-dont-tell exemplified.

Of course, the true start to the game is Dive to the Heart, which is pitch perfect in its own right in plunging the player into a dreamlike realm that is disorienting and yet somehow calming in its inscrutable mystery. Here, the tutorials *are* very much explicit, teaching you the absolute basics of what you need to know for movement and combat. The events on the island proper are an inversion, overtly pounding home the friendship triangle that will come to define the games plot while subtly revealing some of the finer points of gameplay.

Speaking of inversions, Destiny Islands does something else I rarely see in JRPG prologues: it makes most of the mandatory tasks boring and all of the optional stuff fun. If youre so inclined, you can stroll through this entire world without getting into a single fight until the Heartless come calling. Just collect your mushrooms and rope and be on your merry way. Most games would make those sorts of pedestrian scavenger hunts into sidequests that may get you an extra item or piece of equipment, while including more forced battles at frequent intervals to keep players engaged and give them extra practice in combat. KH is smart, though. It knows youre going to want to beat up your friends whether youre directed to or not, so we get the reverse.

The items and provisions Kairi tasks you with finding are pretty nondescript, and you dont get an overabundance of hints for where theyre located. You have to pay attention. Youre climbing ladders and trees, pushing stuff out of the way, and searching little nooks that dont seem to have much purpose. Watch a blind playthrough sometime and theres a solid chance youll see some confused stumbling in the process of looking for the cloth on the first day. All of these abilities are used in later worlds for hidden secrets and goodies, but theyre usually not obvious, so the Islands are making sure you have some concept of how to search for opportunities to apply them as much as just showing you theyre possible. If youre especially eagle eyed, you might notice a cavern in the rear section of the island with a chest in it that you can only reach if you remember from Dive to the Heart that youre able to pick up and throw a box nearby. Nobody mentions this chest or how to get it - its all player ingenuity. And the reward is just a Protect Chain, nothing special, a piece of equipment you can get pretty much anywhere before much longer, but it gets the point across well: Be on the lookout.

Wakka, Selphie, and Teedus are strategically placed around the island on both days so that theyre near these items and other points of interest, making it a natural choice to break up the material gathering with some good ol play-violence. The former two are easy targets for the discovery of Tech Points, Wakka with his slowish lobbing attacks and Selphie with her long animations thatll probably lead you to trigger them by accident, and Tidus is there to give you a more standard contest. He and his Techs give more EXP, but theyre much tougher. He also delivers the important knowledge on Day 2 that Riku has beaten them 3-on-1, which you later get the chance to do as well to prove that you can do everything he can. The Riku fight itself is the pinnacle of this intro sequence. Not only does it play into the thematic hook of that rivalry itself, as hes relatively difficult to defeat for a first-timer, its the one thats intended to show off Revenge Values. RVs are a hidden mechanic in at least the first two mainline KH games that, long story short, determine when enemies (human bosses, most prominently) retaliate against you. DI Riku, for example, will always perform the attack where he falls on his back and kicks back to his feet after you hit him exactly four times. This is genius. It deals more damage to you than anything else in his arsenal, which makes it clear that you should learn how to avoid it, and its unmistakably a reactive move due to the fall portion, so you can instinctively clue in to the fact that youre causing this to happen somehow. If you manage to put those pieces together, congratulations. You can now win that fight consistently, but more importantly, youve got a firm foundation on which to approach that infuriating final fight against him in Hollow Bastion, because it works in almost the exact same basic way.

Its astounding how well-designed this place is. It packs in a stunning amount of info about how the rest of the game operates, distributes that info in active and enjoyable ways, and actually rewards its players in both the short and long term for taking the time to absorb it all. For those that dont, however, its no biggie, because theres very little of this that you NEED to know in order to play and finish the game. And, once you do know these things, theres never a need to relearn them, so you can go ahead and breeze through the fetch quests on all subsequent playthroughs to get to the meatier bits of the game. Its completely player directed. It takes a lot to get me to speak this glowingly about a prologue, but this is the perfect combo. Every game in the world could learn at least a little something from Destiny Islands.

All this is to say that, much like Kingdom Hearts in the macro sense, Kingdom Hearts the game was at its best at the beginning. Gotta love that kind of accidental symmetry.