When I think about the original Kingdom Hearts, there's a lot to love there. The story is very well done, and being the first in the series, they did a great job introducing the characters and the premise, even with relatively little dialogue, compared with most other RPG's or other games in the series. Basically, it did a great job at what it needed to do: make a solid foundation for the series. That, and having played it at a younger age, this game will always have a solid spot in my heart.
However, not all is good there either, even though most of my criticisms can probably be argued to be due to them still figuring out how to work this series. Passing on the obvious issues, like the original release camera and the gummiship (took way too long to be able to warp, in my opinion. Having the warp from the get-go would probably have made people remember this segment a little more fondly), there is something that was more problematic for me, and it is the actual world design. Sure, we had some great designs overall, like Traverse Town and Hook's ship, but most of the other worlds feel a bit disjointed. To elaborate, I'd like to call attention to Halloween Town. The world in itself is beautiful, but when you think about the way you navigate it, it doesn't feel fluid at all. Basically, you feel like you're exploring a series of disjointed thematic rooms instead of an actual world/town. Aside from that, though, I say the combat and gameplay in general lacked a bit of polish. Also, there's the fact that they actually thought they could get away with the "platforming" in this game. The engine wasn't built for this and it shows. This, however, always makes me appreciate gliding and how much it trivializes this part of the game that much more.
So, basically, the first game sells the premise, the world and characters in a great manner, and delivers enough substance in it's gameplay to merit being called a wonderful first step. However, this same gameplay needed a lot of polishing, and the design of the worlds also needed a little bit more of coherence and more thought deserved to be put into the actual tasks you needed to do in those places. There's an honest try, and a good one of that, but they clearly hadn't fully figured out how to make the designs truly engaging by this point.
