I approached this game with some trepidation, for as much as I like Square, I hate Disney. (I won’t go into deep reasons for either of those here. Suffice that the feelings exist.) As such, I refused to buy it, because money would make its way from that sale to Disney. I ended up playing a copy owned by a friend of a friend.
Said playing only annoyed me further, because it’s a good game. Square made a good game, and Disney did its best with its characters. So we went and visited Halloween Town and Hundred Acre Wood and many other places where the lands and characters were exactly as Disney had made them. (For good or ill; Pooh was as lovable as he has been with Disney, and Tarzan was as annoying as Disney has made him.)
There are plenty of side quests in addition to the main events. You can search out all 101 dalmations, lost among the various worlds; find all of the (often hidden) trinity points to gain treasures and unique items; fight wave after wave of enemies in the Coliseum; spend time building a spaceship to fly around in (which is solely for fun—there’s no bearing this has on anything else in the game); and several other things I can’t think of right now.
The plot is decent. Honestly, it’s nothing really extraordinary, but it was interesting and I’ve seen much worse.
And then there’s Donald and Goofy. You play Sora, a young boy who lost his friends when his world vanished. You have to have Goofy and Donald with you as you travel around. These two are some of the most annoying traveling companions I’ve run across. Of the pair, Goofy’s actually the intelligent one, which doesn’t stop Donald from shooting his mouth off every chance he gets. And they’re largely useless in battle. They tend to flail away at enemies, doing useless amounts of damage until Sora walks over to actually kill the thing. Donald likes to cast magic spells, occasionally to useful effect. And if you ever want to get rid of any items, like potions or megalixirs, just give them to Donald. Apparently, to his AI, “only use items in an emergency” means “please use up all of your items as quickly as possible”.
One of my favorite sounds is the “wawawawawa” sound Donald makes when an enemy hits him.
So there’s a lot of good stuff about this game, and it’s a worthwhile one to play. But, even aside from my dislike of Disney, I wouldn’t go out of my way to get it. Borrow it from a friend or wait a while and pick it up from some store’s used games bin.