I'd say even the combat is better than the other games. Yeah, the others are flashier, but they also have a lot less interesting stuff to actually do. They focus so much on offense that defense gets left behind, and the triangle qte's replace more interesting things that you actually did yourself in the original, which makes the game just easy enough that you don't have to worry about anything unless you're playing on the nonsense ultra hard modes. The limitations in the original made even normal mode have a decent difficulty curve, which made the players engage with more options, leading to more unique encounters especially in boss fights. Stuff like blocking, sword clashing, and hitting back projectiles. Bosses that you could actually climb on top of. And limited movement forcing you to meet the bosses on a more personal level, leading to a higher focus on defense. I feel like I had unique tactics for most bosses, whereas in KH2 and onwards I was just able to spam and wait for the win button to show up. That on top of the story getting progressively worse, and the worlds having far less to do in them with worse to basically non-existent secrets and level design, make KH1 the clear best in my eyes, with the rest never coming close to matching the magic of the original.
