Kingdom Hearts is such a headscratcher of a series for me, because they're these big-ass ARPGs with incredibly satisfying mechanics, and they pull in all this huge insane industry talent to have the best art direction, the best music, the biggest-profile actors and these big full-length campaigns where no environment or battle goes unturned. They're the video game equivalent of a really good blockbuster movie.

But they're also these incredibly weird, pretentious, self-important meditations on the nature of the self and goodwill, where cutscenes will go for half an hour to say something about as complex as "Good is light and evil is dark! Choose wisely!" ala Realms of the Haunting, and it's all about as deep as a puddle. And the dialogue writing ranges somewhere between "mediocre anime" and "Star Wars prequels".

But even THAT leaves out that they're a giant fucking Disney and Square Enix crossover universe??? Where Mickey Mouse is an edgy anime anti-hero who has to do things that are slightly morally-questionable, and always shows up at the most pivotal plot moments to wreck house??? While almost all of the actual Disney WORLDS you visit mean jack shit to that main story plot I described in the previous paragraph. They feel like you could literally make the series entirely modular and replace worlds with whichever properties you wanted sometimes.

And even then, after all this criticism I'm lobbing at the story, I still watch each and every single scene with bated breath because yeah, it's actually still really fucking well-directed and acted, hokey dialogue or no. I've been playing through the entire series at the same time I've been working through the Ratchet and Clank series, and my main two thoughts about the writing have somehow been "wow, Ratchet and Clank is so much more witty and clever with its dialogue" and "Wow, this is SO much more compelling than any Ratchet and Clank story".

So I guess I like it???? This has left me with more complex emotions than any other game series without any of those emotions being frustration (though some of 358 Days definitely did do that). I feel kinda the same way I did when I tried to watch Monogatari, simultaneously confused, intrigued, and a little bit embarrassed.