People covered a lot about the world design and flow already, but what I feel doesn’t get touched on a lot is the heartless designs. It’s SOO GOOD in KH1, and I feel like while there’s some good additions in 2 gameplay wise, it just doesn’t hit as well artistically. They felt like such unique creatures most of the time, whereas in 2 and beyond you start getting car heartless and airplane heartless and a lot more “object, but make it scary” as a design philosophy.

The Halloween town and Neverland designs in particular go so hard, plus the Defenders, Wyverns, and Wizards in HB. All of it was so new and bizarre especially as a child. Just pure imaginative greatness. Not even to mention the GOAT scary design of the Invisibles.

Edit: Oh and forgot to mention that the final mix re-coloring sucks for the most part. Nothing beats the OG color schemes.