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The Difficulty Curve Can Be Tough
Kingdom Hearts sends you through several sets of worlds, but in many ways, the first four can be the hardest. You won’t get any healing magic until you defeat Clayton in Deep Jungle, nor will you have much money to buy items and accessories during your first trip to Traverse Town.
This does mean you’ll have to bear down to get through some of the tough early-game encounters, such as the aforementioned Clayton fight or other bosses like Trickmaster and Cloud. Patience will take you far, but you can also give yourself a boost by doing some good old fashioned grinding.
Get Tech Points to Level up Faster
To help with the grind, Kingdom Hearts includes a combat feature called Tech Points. These function exactly like regular XP, getting you closer to leveling up each time. You may have already gotten a few by accident, but they’re awarded for pulling off special moves during combat. The most common is counter-attacking certain enemies and interrupting their own attack; you’ll know you did it right when the Tech Point text flashes on screen.
You can also get Tech Points by hitting certain enemies with their weakness. Anytime you see a Red Nocturne, hit it with Blizzard magic for free XP. Likewise, you can hit Blue Rhapsodies with Fire.
You Can Revisit Worlds Later
You won’t be able to see every corner or open every chest upon your first visit to any of the initial worlds, so don’t get obsessed with any slightly out of reach goodies. However, you should be prepared to spend some time with the game before actually attempting to revisit any worlds. The first reason is because, to be honest, Gummi Ship missions aren’t the most fun or robust part of Kingdom Hearts.
The second reason is that after clearing the first ring of worlds and returning to Traverse Town, Cid will give you a Warp-G. This allows you to revisit worlds instantly from the menu, instead of manually flying there each time. You will still have to fly to new worlds, of course, and original game clunkiness does mean you’ll have to first warp to an adjacent world before visiting a new one, but in either case, the Warp Drive is a huge time saver.