What If the Square Enix Smash Hit Kingdom Hearts was Turn Based?
It seems like everyone in the RPG world is talking about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, released on 25th April 2025, and its amazing turn-based gameplay. Heavily inspired by the original Final Fantasy games, along with other turn-based JRPGs, Clair Obscur breathes life into the idea of turn-based strategy and has had the gaming world turned on its head in discussing the pros and cons.
It does bring to light outliers and innovators such as the Kingdom Hearts franchise, another Square Enix hard hitter that released initially in 2002 with the OG Kingdom Hearts. At the time the game was released, Squeenix was particularly known for its mastery of turn-based gameplay and had just dropped Final Fantasy X in 2001, which stayed true to this system. The expectation of Kingdom Hearts was to follow this successful mold. But it didn’t.
What would the gaming world look like if Squeenix had stuck to this mold? What would change in the Kingdom Hearts chain with a turn-based directive?
Breaking Convention
Kingdom Hearts is an interesting notch in the Square Enix belt. A collaboration with Disney Interactive, it follows the story of Sora, a boy from a remote island dreaming of adventure with his friends. As his world is swallowed by darkness, he embarks on a journey that will take him on one of the most iconic emotional rollercoasters in gaming history alongside the likes of Disney favorites, Donald and Goofy.
The developers have been particularly clever with this game, and its stand-alone popularity is a testament to the choices they made. The game utilises some iconic Square Enix staples that mark it as a part of the family, Sora’s patented spiky hair, for example, and the character designs as provided by the renowned Tetsuya Nomura. This is where the developers decided to boldly subvert all expectations and make Kingdom Hearts one of the most satisfying button mashers to grace the PS2.
This mechanical choice very much comes across as a statement of versatility. It says: ‘look at us, we not only mastered turn-based brilliance, but can make a game equivalent to all the best button mashers out there.’ The care that the developers took with the movement speed, the combos and the enemies really shines through in the organic way you acquire skills as Sora, how his movements start off slow and clunky to show his inexperience, and how they become finnessed as he learns how to fly (and what game isn’t just the best game with actual flight to be learnt) and wield the magical keyblade.
This is not an arbitrary button masher made to simply stir the Square Enix regulars, it’s a well-thought-out system that learns and grows with the player to bring an extra level of organic nuance to the production as a whole.
The Kingdom Hearts Strategy
So, what would have happened if Kingdom Hearts had followed the expected conventions? By no means would it have done poorly. The original Kingdom Hearts game came out right after Final Fantasy X, after the propulsion of Final Fantasy 7 and 8’s popularity, the solidity of Final Fantasy 9, and then the cutting-edge installment of X, now with voice acting. Everything was coming up trumps for Square Enix, and with Disney being in its golden renaissance period for animation, if this game had been turn-based, it probably would have been just as popular.
A turn-based approach might have seen a more diverse skill-set for Donald and Goofy, opening them up for better development and allowing us to explore the stylistic potential of skill trees for various characters that join the party along the journey, such as Aladdin and Tarzan. It may have also left more running power to expand on some of the Disney worlds, as they generally felt quite enclosed and small compared to the grand panoramas of the Final Fantasy world maps.
Perhaps, though, if the game hadn’t been made using those pioneering Kingdom Hearts hack-and-slash mechanics, then it would have lost some of its heart. After all, a substantial amount of personality lies in the way that Sora moves in the game and its nice to see a new protagonist, another bold choice on Square’s side, stand with the likes of Donald and Goofy who, along with Mickey, helped create the pillars of animation through their spearheading creators.
A More Diverse Studio
Overall, the decision to make Kingdom Hearts a real-time combat RPG game rather than a turn-based experience is one that very purposefully set Square Enix down a diversive path to show off how adaptable it could be as a studio.
Though Kingdom Hearts could well have been a successful game if it had stuck to the turn-based roots that the studio had become notorious for, the cutting-edge battle system brought a new dimension to this installment from Squeenix, and, though it might be fun to picture living in an alternate reality every once in a while with some Nobody taking the helm of innovation, it doesn’t change the fact that we got a cracking game back in 2002 that would become just as important to people as the juggernauts of Square’s Final Fantasy enterprise.
