La Cité des Cloches

Well, I finally got Kingdom Hearts 3D! And the "Hunchback" world I've been looking forward to is the second world out there!

How does it measure up?

(Spoilers ahead)



It's a little disappointing. But then, my hopes were unreasonably high and I'm still glad it's in there.

PRO:
Finally seeing the characters from the film in a Kingdom Hearts game is awesome, and the animation fits the standard we've come to expect from KH.

CON:
The only original voice actors returning are Charles Kimbrough as Victor and Jason Alexander as Hugo, and neither are given much to do. Everyone else is replaced (Tony Jay and Mary Wickes have the excuse of having passed away, may they rest in peace). This wouldn't be so bad, except they all sound a bit off. Whoever they got to do Quasi and Esmerelda sound nothing like Hulce and Moore. Phil Lamarr does a passable Phoebus, but you can tell it's not Kevin Kline. The one exception is Corey Burton as Frollo: you'd almost swear Tony Jay had risen again in some scenes. Most egregiously, however, is that Clopin is absent from the entire proceedings, though I suppose I'd prefer no Clopin to someone other than Paul Kandell voicing him.

PRO:
The level design is amazing, especially with the Reality Shift ability in this world being Faithline, which essentially allows you to air-surf across Paris and Notre Dame.

CON:
No Clopin

PRO:
Seeing some of the classic scenes faithfully recreated in cutscenes.

CON:
Seeing some of the other classic scenes bowdlerized to hell because one of Kingdom Hearts' few flaws is that it tends to do that sometimes. Also, due to the nature of the game, one character will get some of the faithful scenes and the other will get a sort of alternate reality scene (depends on the storyline).

PRO:
The enemies match the atmosphere perfectly.

CON:
The original film has arguably the best score of all the Disney Animated Canon, and they use none of it for background music?! Although you can kind of hum "Hellfire" over the overworld music and have it fit...kind of...

PRO:
Finally, the most underrated Disney Classic gets the limelight it deserves.

CON:
DID I MENTION NO FREAKING CLOPIN?!