If You Like Starfield’s Shipbuilding, You’ll Love Kingdom Hearts

Starfield Gummi Ship

Lately, I’ve been playing a really fantastic game. It lets you travel to and explore distant worlds, build and customize spaceships, and then use those spaceships in epic battles against hordes of enemy ships. It’s even got a pretty great story, too, if you’re willing to spend a couple hundred hours digging into it. Yeah, Kingdom Hearts is great.

I know, I know, that was a silly introduction, but it’s true. If you’ve looked on from a distance and never delved into Kingdom Hearts, you might think it’s a silly crossover game combining Final Fantasy fashion sense, Disney characters, and convoluted storytelling. You would be right – it is exactly that – but it’s so much more than that too. When I ranked every Kingdom Hearts game from worst to best, I did make mention that there aren’t actually any bad games, exactly, just better games than others. I’m a bit of a mega-fan, so you’ll have to forgive me for the comparison I’m about to make.

I have been playing through Starfield lately, just like everyone else on the planet. As Bethesda’s latest and arguably greatest, it ticks a lot of boxes, with decent enough combat, some fun exploration, and a story that’s pretty compelling, if a bit silly. But Starfield’s shipbuilding was really familiar to me — as I spent hours meticulously rotating and placing ship pieces and weapons, I started feeling a little bit nostalgic. Then it dawned on me: it’s basically just Kingdom Hearts’ Gummi Ship builder.

For those who haven’t played Kingdom Hearts (yet), each of the three numbered Kingdom Hearts games have you traveling between different Disney worlds, and to get to those worlds you have to travel on a Gummi Ship. Gummi Ship sections are on-rails shoot-em-ups where you pilot a spaceship and shoot down hordes of enemy ships piloted by the game’s enemies, Heartless. Or the ships might actually be Heartless themselves, it’s hard to say for sure.

As you progress through each game’s story, you’ll get given more ship blueprints, and you can use these blueprints to fly default ships through the whole game. They’re not super fancy or powerful, but if 10-year-old me can get through the entire game with them, anybody can. That said, if you’re looking to get creative, you can definitely spend some time customizing those blueprints, or build a ship from scratch.

There are dozens of ship parts to unlock and use in building your ships, and you can create some truly wonderful things. It’s not quite as in-depth as Starfield’s ship builder, but it’s got the same vibe and works in much the same way. I would even say that in terms of player friendliness, Kingdom Hearts’ ship builder is better than Starfield’s.

And hey, if you do enjoy that shipbuilding and ship battling, you may just enjoy the rest of the game too. The Kingdom Hearts series’ combat is second-to-none for action RPGs, and while the story can be a little bit convoluted at times, it’s still absolutely fascinating and enjoyable, and not too difficult to follow if you play through all the games. Sure, Kingdom Hearts doesn't have an amazing Batman-inspired quest like Starfield does, but it's got plenty of other amazing quests to embark upon.

If you liked Starfield, you may just find yourself having an absolute blast with Kingdom Hearts, too, and you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try. You know what they say: come for the space fights, stay for the Little Mermaid singalong minigames (I’m sorry, ignore I said that, it’s only one stage I promise).