If you ever found yourself struggling at all while playing Kingdom Hearts, then you should count yourself lucky, because according to the game's director, it was originally going to be much harder.
In a 2003 interview featured in Hyper PlayStation 2 magazine, now available on Shmuplations, Tetsuya Nomura discusses the development of the first Kingdom Hearts title, which was at the time a few months away from release, alongside Metal Gear Solid developer Yoji Shinkawa. At one point, Nomura notes that, despite being a Disney game, it's quite "hardcore", and had previously been even more so.
"My concept for Kingdom Hearts was that it would be a game with a lot of depth, something you could play for a long time," he explains. "I wanted to try making a game where the player could do anything. Even though Kingdom Hearts is a Disney game, there are quite a few "hardcore" elements that remain."
He gives an example of navigation, with Kingdom Hearts featuring a 3D map but no 2D minimap, forcing players to explore and use their heads - something Nomura believes to be part of the fun. At this point, Shinkawa chimes in, saying that "Kingdom Hearts sounds like an easy game to get lost in," before Nomura explains that the game had previously been even harder.
"It was actually MORE hardcore in the beginning. We had some puzzles in there that would make you go, 'what is this, Takeshi's Challenge?' We lowered the difficulty a bit, but it still has more bite to it than most mainstream releases today," explains Nomura, referencing Takeshi Kitano's infamously confusing 1986 NES title.
Thankfully, the game didn't turn out to be as difficult to understand as Takeshi's Challenge, though Nomura concedes that it probably wasn't as simple as many players thought it would be. "[It's] the Disney factor, it's a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing, isn't it? I think the gameplay is going to defy player expectations in that regard." At this point, I think it's safe to say that's exactly what it
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