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.
