Highlights
- Kingdom Hearts’ world of Atlantica, despite being criticized by the community, offers a unique and refreshing change of pace with its underwater exploration and reliance on magic for solving puzzles and combat.
- Atlantica also introduces a major narrative twist – a revelation adds depth and complexity to the story of Kingdom Hearts.
Kingdom Hearts contains a lot of secrets within its worlds. Hidden paths that lead to treasure, or direct shortcuts to shave time, and they require curiosity to find these spots and the willingness to interact with out-of-the-box thinking. This is a divisive design for plenty of fans. Players like myself love being more involved, while others get lost and confused.
Of all Kingdom Hearts’ worlds however, a few have emerged as the most reviled by the community. Deep Jungle and Monstro are accused of being mazes, but neither of them are as notorious as Atlantica, home of The Little Mermaid. Even from the very beginning, I never agreed with these criticisms. Simple exploration and curiosity solves the maze issues, and once mastered, you will always remember the layout. Each world also adds to the overall tone and story, and that includes the much hated Atlantic.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Is Giving Zack More Love, Which Is Great
Zack “the puppy” could finally getting the recognition he deserves in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Swim This Way
It’s fitting we just had an article from our Vlad Mazanko about Soulslike platforming failures, as I feel Kingdom Hearts 1 has some similarities to FromSoftware’s design. Clues about where to go are purposefully cryptic, and yes, there’s a lot of optional platforming to find rare synthesis materials and stat boosts, something you can ignore if you are so inclined, but are rewarded when you pull it off.
Atlantica sees you swimming as a merman instead of platforming, and Sebastian the crab even makes sure you’ll have your sea legs through a quick tutorial. Hold square to swim down, circle to swim up, and you can swim directly to anything you lock-on to. It is still a sudden shift in gameplay, so even with a tutorial, I understand why players would be put-off by it. However, between the strong tutorial and the straightforward controls, it manages to still feel at home with the rest of the game. It’s flavor to make this world stand out more, and I always felt it nailed it.
The Atlantica section also marks one of the biggest narrative twists in the entire series.
But far from the cumbersome slog fans complain about; all you have to do is hold square to go down and circle to go up, and you can even swim directly to anything you lock-on to! With jumping no longer possible, Atlantica instead asks you to rely on magic to solve environmental puzzles. Using fire to explode a sea urchin that unlocks a shortcut, or the color-coded clams that give Mythril Shards when attacked with the matching spell.
Atlantica grows on you more once you realize the solution to your problems is relying on magic for exploration and combat. Many enemies are out of reach, so magic closes the gap. Magic can also prevent Sheltering Zone Heartless from becoming small Sea Neons, unlike when you rely on smacking them.
The key to enjoying Atlantica is understanding this rule. Think like Ursula, and rely on your magic over everything else.
Dive To The Heart
The Atlantica section also marks one of the biggest narrative twists in the entire series. This is the world where King Triton drops a massive lore bomb: that the Keyblade wielders aren’t the heroes Sora was told they are, and that instead they bring chaos and ruin. It’s the exact opposite of everything we’ve heard before, but there’s never a counterpoint to prove Triton is mistaken. Sora proves he’s a seeker of peace, but the reality that Keyblade wielders are villains is a chilling revelation.
Where story issues are harder to swallow is the Kingdom Hearts 2 version of Atlantica. Like many Disney worlds, it was reduced to a retelling of the Little Mermaid movie with little unique plot. And this time, it was a musical minigame marathon.
And yet I’ve grown to love this version of Atlantica too. Sure, using songs directly from the movie is pretty on-the-nose in terms of references, but this is The Little Mermaid we’re talking about! There are original songs too, and they kinda blow, but in a so-bad-it’s-good kinda way. You can even replay these missions and refuse to hit the prompts, laughing at the chaos you’ve ensued. Guess Triton was right about Keybearers bringing destruction.
Kingdom Hearts wouldn’t be the same without Atlantica. Between the clever use of magic, the lore drops, and yes, even the swimming and the singing. I will always love how Kingdom Hearts portrayed Atlantica. For me, it was and always will be a welcome change of pace, filled with the secrets and story beats that make Kingdom Hearts what it is.
Final Fantasy Could Learn From Granblue Fantasy Relink’s Squad-Based Combat
Relink gave me the camaderie both combat and story that I craved from Final Fantasy 16.
