As I’ve stated before, one of my big goals with Guiding Key, Kotaku’s year-long Kingdom Hearts replay, is to examine whether or not the things that have become memetic complaints about the series in the community are actually that bad. Later this week, I’ll deliver the first end-of-the-month check-in, where we’ll talk about some of the first game’s Disney worlds like Alice in Wonderland and Tarzan. But today, we’ve reached one of the more maligned parts of this first game. I want to talk about the Gummi Ship, the space-faring vessel Sora and friends ride in as they travel between worlds.

Does it suck? I don’t know that I feel passionately enough about it yet to say that, but the spaceflight sequences are definitely incredibly sauceless, lacking any real weight and peppered with dreadfully dull combat encounters. And even though you can upgrade your ship with Chip and Dale, there’s not a whole lot of reason to your hands too dirty, is there?

Hm. Maybe the Gummi Ship does suck, at least a little. I’m still early in this replay and haven’t yet had to use it all that many times. The trips between worlds will get far more dangerous as Kingdom Hearts goes on and maybe more engaging, but in the handful of back-and-forths I’ve done thus far, it feels like pretty antiquated padding of a sort that future games would try to avoid. Kingdom Hearts II and III double and triple down on the world-crossing mechanic, but at the very least, the space between Disney movies becomes more frantic and involved.

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