Parent's Guide: Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Kingdom Hearts is a series of games that blend the worlds of Disney and the epic role playing series Final Fantasy to great effect. Telling the tale of Sora, a young boy who ends up travelling through worlds based on popular Disney films in search of his friends Riku and Kairi, who both disappeared when mysterious shadowy beings known as Heartless invaded their home one night, it's up to you to grab the legendary Keyblade, and defend the Disney worlds from attack. The Heartless, who are the living manifestations of the darkness that exists inside people's hearts, have invaded the worlds of Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid (among others), changing the well known stories in specific ways. With the help of King Mickey, the peaceful knight Goofy and castle magician Donald Duck, it's up to you to battle with the heartless, and put right what went wrong, to seal the worlds away from the darkness once and for good.

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix is the perfect place for those new to series to start. A collection that includes the original Kingdom Hearts in it's enhanced 'Final Mix' form, a remake of Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, which is essentially Kingdom Hearts 1.5, and almost three hours of cutscenes taken from the DS game 358/2 Days, all on one disc, the game lets you get to grips with the story and the characters from where it all started - although it is worth bearing in mind that even though the box states there's three games included, only two of them are really playable - the third is basically just one big film.

Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix is essentially an action/adventure game - battles are fast-paced and often against large numbers of enemies, although the controls are fairly basic, with a single button used for most of your attacks. When you're not battling the Heartless enemies, your time is mostly spent wondering around the various Disney-inspired worlds, collecting up characters' lost items - Tarzan's Jane's projector slides or evidence to prove Alice isn't guilty - while exploring the worlds to trigger new story events or talk to other characters.

Meanwhile, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories complicates the battles a bit more by adding in 'cards' - each attack costs a card, and you have a limited number of cards you can use before you're forced to 'reload' your deck (which takes a bit of time), encouraging you to be a bit more conservative and strategic when facing foes. The way the world is laid out is also a bit different, with cards being used to create rooms with different properties - more or less enemies, bonus treasure or sleeping bad guys - as you work your way through the maze-like floors of Castle Oblivion, each of which corresponds to a different Disney film.

Although there's a lot of voice acting, not everything in the game is dubbed, so your child will need to be a confident reader in order to tackle this. Meanwhile, the camera controls can sometimes be a little bit on the awkward side, while challenging boss fights may catch out younger players. Beyond that, though, if your child can handle the fairly simple controls, there's not too much else that should really be a massive barrier here - if they can handle games like Super Mario Galaxy, they should be OK with this.

With many of the Disney worlds being taken over by mysterious Heartless beings, Kingdom Hearts' protagonist Sora often finds himself getting into a few scuffles - which mostly involve him bashing the shadowy creatures into submission with his trusty Keyblade, a sword that looks like a giant key. There's no blood, guts or gore whatsoever, and once defeated the Heartless monsters simply disappear.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 3