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Kingdom Hearts II Review

Genre: Action RPG

Developer: Square Enix

System I played On: PS2

Year: 2006

If you’ve read my Kingdom Hearts one review, you could tell I fucking loved that game, even though I believe it is a little overrated. I gave it a ten out of ten, but I didn’t expect a giant fandom to praise it like it was God. I love it for my back-story and memories with it, not because it’s super awesomely perfect, although it is damn amazing as well. Kingdom Hearts II on the other hand, I believe to be the better game, the one I like more. As a child I hyped the game a lot, but it was actually my brother who got it first. While he played I saw the end, but before I could finish it myself he sold it, selling one of my favorite games of all time away for twenty dollars, even though it was worth a lot more at the time. But years later I got my PS2, and rented all the games I wanted really bad to play, two of them being Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories, and Kingdom Hearts II. And both were amazing. But now for the same price my brother sold the game years ago, I finally bought Kingdom Hearts II, and just replayed it, and it was fucking awesome. So essentially if you don’t understand the Kingdom Hearts storyline, and went from one to two, it’ll make sense for the most part, but play Chain of Memories on the PS2, it’ll help a lot, and 358/2 Days on the DS. I know the storyline and characters are all over the place, and time it would take to summarize it all would probably be about as long as some game’s storyline together. But anyway our story begins with Roxas, a boy in a new town called Twilight Town. He has dreams of Sora, and he seems to be connected to him, although not knowing him. By the end of our prologue Roxas helps awaken a sleeping Sora (Play Chain of Memories to find out how he became like this) and that’s about it. So Sora wakes up, learns that there is a secret Organization XIII who is made of nobodies, the creatures that live on after their heart disappears and turns into a heartless. So Sora while also trying to find King Mickey and Riku must also stop the organization’s plans. Phew, try paraphrasing anything to do with the Kingdom Hearts storyline. Anyway, the game as a whole I love. It’s the big blockbuster follow to one of my favorite games, and it doesn’t shallow to be a smaller game, it a sequel like none other. It’s not just the next step, or the follow up that doesn’t need to happen, it’s a large puzzle in the giant story of Kingdom Hearts that you didn’t know was so damn huge from the first game. As for story, the game itself has a full storyline, filled with Disney storlines filling slightly dumbed down versions of their movies, and enough Final Fantasy refrences and characters to count those as part of the story. So you must know what happened in at least a dozen Disney movies, a dozen Final Fantasy games, and multiple Kingdom Hearts games that release before and after this… yeah. Okay, you don’t need all that, but it would help to get the outside source material to help your experience. You could go in blind and still walk away with a great experience. COULD. Anyway, on the topic of story, this game has a lot more than the first game. I remember the replaying the first game for the review and thinking, "I remember more cut scenes than this…” or "That could have been explained better.” In this, cut scenes are all over the freaking place. And I mean, all over. And thankfully, the characters have also improved. Sora’s voice has deepened, and he’s more adventurous and likeable, not to mention his new costume is a great improvement. Besides him, you have characters all over. You’ll like so many, there’s just not enough time for all of them. Whether it be the organization, the Disney, the Final Fantasy, or maybe the singular Kingdom Hearts story, there’s something to like on terms of characters. But that’s not all there is here. There is of course the combat. The combat is improved greatly. I actually have a lot of fun fighting, and whipping a key blade around and destroying hordes of heartless is really cool, and the boss fights are epic and always different and fun. Not to mention they’ve added a couple things, and improved others. One the triangle button plays a big part, and helps get certain attacks on certain enemies, and is essentially a quick time event in combat, but it definitely works, and helps when oozing into an actual quick time event in the game, and those are good too. You now have forms, and they’re really bad ass. Sora enters forms that give his clothes a new color, and he gets a whole new fighting style depending on the forms, and they greatly help. Not to mention the summons. The summons are much better, and I actually brought them out now. All in all combat is treated really well. All in all, Kingdom Hearts II is a total package, and an amazing big game sequel to the first. Also the gummi ship is much better, and not as much of a drag. It’s worth getting into if you really want, and isn’t miserable to those of us who just want to get to the next world. Speaking of worlds, they’re all new and improved. New places like the Lion King, Mulan, Pirates of the Caribbean have been added (yes, you heard that right, they’re in this game) and the old ones like beast have their own world, and I think in the end the worlds outdoes themselves. It is far superior, and even though I love the first game and have more of back-story with it, I had my memories with Kingdom Hearts II as well, and being the better game also helps. Kingdom Hearts II proves why this is one of my favorite series.

Kingdom Hearts II gets a 5/5

Spoilers: I remember on a sticky note I had, because I played Chain of Memories and this around the same time, I wrote down whenever I killed an organization member. I beat them one at a time, and it was very fulfilling when I finally got the last one. Another of my favorite moments was the thousand heartless war, who doesn’t want to fight a thousand fucking heartless!? Some things like the Colisseum I felt were dumbed down, but I don’t care. Why? I got to fight with Auron! YES!!!! Only one Final Fantasy game under my belt, and now I know what it feels like to have them make a cameo. That being said, the gang from X-2 could have been better. I can see why they would be in pixie form, they finally can take liberties with the characters, but even though I haven’t played X-2 yet, I really would like to see Yuna and Rikku, and not in this cutesy way. Anyway, great game, amazing game, and I loved just about every second of it.