Kingdom Hearts returns with better fights, monsters, and newer cameos featuring new disney movies and square characters.
Just like the previous game, Kingdom Hearts is an action RPG for the Playstation 2 that continues the story of a mysterious object known as Kingdom Hearts and intertwined in the story are Sora, Riku, Kairi, and other Disney characters. This story is a continuation of the unfinished ending of Kingdom Hearts where Riku and King Mickey were trapped behind the Door to Darkness to seal off the Heartless invasion and the journey of Sora and his friends to find them. Sora, though is the main character in the game, does not show up until a bit later in the beginning of the game. Rather, Kingdom Hearts II starts out with a character known as Roxas. Roxas begins to have dreams about Sora and his previous journey with Donald and Goofy in his sleep. As he awakens he is Twilight Town. He goes to the Usual Spot to hang with his friends Hayner, Pence, and Olette. However, strange things being to occur in this town as words become stolen as well as pictures. Roxas runs into the thief that stole the word “pictures” and photos which turns out to be a strange white being. As Roxas is unable to harm the thief a mysterious object appears in front of him. A blade that resembles a key. As Roxas wields the Keyblade he goes into battle defeating the thief and retrieving the stolen goods. The odd thing is that the pictures are all pictures of Roxas. Days go by and Roxas continues to have dreams about Sora and eventually the day comes where summer’s biggest event is in town. A duel called Struggle where one fights with each other to collect the most orbs. As Roxas goes through the Struggle tournament the final match comes to him fast. However, the last opponent is no normal opponent as time is stopped everywhere he sees. People remained motionless, silence filled the air, and no one could hear anything. Roxas was once again faced with the mysterious white being. However, he was not alone as he fought with the Keyblade once again. After defeating the mysterious enemy, an odd man dressed in a black hooded cloak shows up. He reveals himself and is known to be called Axel. This red haired man says the words, “Number 13, the Keyblade’s Chosen. Roxas.” Roxas confused by what Axel had said to him demands answers. Axel saying there’s no time for Q&A says he’s going to drag Roxas back with him to wherever he wants. As both disagree with each others demands a fight begins. The fight is soon interrupted by a mysterious red dressed man. He convinces to Roxas that Axel speaks nonsense. Axel on the other hand screams that he’s right. With both convincing Roxas and causing him pain, they suddenly disappear. Time is once again resumed as Roxas comes out as the Struggle Champion. The Champion’s trophy holds 4 glass orbs one for each of Roxas’ friends including him. Roxas’ and his friends go on top of the Twilight Town Station Tower to enjoy ice cream. As they have fun, suddenly Roxas falls off the tower. Roxas then makes a connection with Kairi, a good friend of Sora’s that currently lives at Destiny Islands. Roxas tells who he is, while Kairi asks why he reminds her of someone. Kairi had forgotten who Sora was. As Roxas begins to tell her Sora’s name, Roxas goes unconscious. He once again dreams again except he is still living. Roxas wandering around town eventually ends up at the Twilight Town’s mysterious abandoned mansion. There at the mansion Roxas meets Namine, a witch that can control memories, in a trance. Namine then tells of Roxas’ role which was that he was never supposed to have existed. With this engraved in his thoughts Roxas suddenly wakes up from his trance. The next day he is goes to the Usual Spot to meet his friends, except that Hayner and the others are now not able to see Roxas or even remember Roxas. As he leaves the Spot, Axel suddenly attacks claiming that he must now finish off Roxas. Roxas escapes with the help of a mysterious voice that resembled to that of the red cloaked man. Roxas runs to the mansion, and inside the mansion he finds a computer where the whole town had been controlled. He proceeds further into the mansion to find that his dreams weren’t actual dreams but memories. In side the basement of the mansion he finds Donald and Goofy in a capsule. The next room that Roxas entered was a much bigger capsule. Inside was Sora. It seemed as though Roxas was in a digital world and his role was to be digitalized back into Sora. Roxas was a part of Sora and therefore he must be returned to him. And thus the story begins where Roxas re-enters Sora, and soon he wakes up to continue his journey of finding his friends once again.
Sora exits the mansion in Twilight Town with Donald and Goofy and wanders around town. Eventually they run into Hayner, Pence, and Olette only to find out that King Mickey was looking for them. Sora makes haste to the Twilight Town Station when suddenly they become attacked by the strange white beings that Roxas was attacked by. These creatures were called Nobodies and eventually wear the young hero out. King Mickey then shows up to aid Sora leaving the message, “Get on the next train out of town. The train knows the way!” With this message Sora, Donald, and Goofy leave Twilight Town on a mysterious train with the hope of finally meeting Riku.
The game play concept is actual quite simple but it’s much more diverse compared to that of Kingdom Hearts. Also the combat pace seems to be much more faster than the original Kingdom Hearts and much more action packed. The battle scheme is very similar as you attack with a Keyblade. The Command menu is on the bottom left and by using the D-pad you can select a certain command and click on the X button to utilize it. Most of the time you will have the Command on Attack to attack enemies with your Keyblade. However, at certain times it might be wise to access other commands in your menu. Magic and Items come standard in the Command Menu, however, unlike the original Kingdom Hearts 3 new features on the Command has been implemented. The first is the Reaction (Also known as the Triggers) Commands, where a triangle may show up right above the Command Menu and it activates a certain move that Sora may be able to pull off against an enemy. The Reactions also do not always serve to fight but to talk to people, save, and to open chests. Reactions become really useful in fighting and are quite essential as you immerse yourself in the near end of the game. The second Command that was implemented was the Drive Forms. Sora after acquiring his new outfit learns the ability to merge with your partners in order to transform into a certain mode. As Sora merges with Goofy, he transforms into a warrior type class and dishes out tons of combos and damage, however, the draw back is that he loses the ability to use magic, whereas combining with Donald enhances magic abilities. Drives are fun to use but can sometimes be a game killer due to the fact that it makes the game a whole lot less challenging that it should be unless the game difficulty is on Proud. Nonetheless this is quite a unique and an amazing feature. Drives do not last forever but as you level up drives the duration of the Drive Forms increases. The way each Drive Form levels up is different so you must meet the requirements before using it. Also by leveling up Forms Sora gains the ability to use the Form’s special ability such as Super Jump or Dash. The third Command feature is the Limit. The Limit is more of a special reaction command that basically does a massive damage to the enemies on the screen. However, each Limit consumes the whole entire magic meter so it’s not always wise to use this feature. Other features that are available are the Items, Magic, Summoning your monster allies, and Party switching ability. You move Sora using the left joystick and control the camera with the right joystick. The R1 is to target, square is an action or support command ability, the X is the Command ability, circle is to jump, and the triangle is the reaction command. The controller scheme is well done and fits to the gameplay conveniently except that sometimes it’s rather brutal to use the D-pad to use items that you want during an intense boss fight.
The menu consists of the Items in your bag or equipped to your characters. This feature allows you to use non combat items or combat usable items. These items might heal you outside of combat, replenish your drive bar, or increase your attack. Abilities is the next menu choice. This menu allows you to equip special abilities that might enhance your combat skills. These consist of support, attack, and adaptation. Support might boost your attacks and defense. Attack allows you to use square button to defend or boost your attack strategies. Adaptations are learned abilities from Drive Forms. Other menus are customization, which allows you to set up the playing style of your allies and magic shortcuts accessed by L1, party, configuration of the system, Status of your party, and of course Jiminy’s Journal which gave you information on each world you visited. To travel to different worlds that you must visit as a part of your journey to destroy more Heartlesses and find your friends you must open portals and gateways to worlds. In order of this to occur you must fight with your transportation called the Gummi Ship through space and fight Heartless and Nobodies. The Gummi Ship fight has gotten much more tense as there are tons more enemies to destroy in space. You use the X button to attack and basically shoot enemies and not get killed before you reach the end point. Once you reached the end you have complete access to the world that the portal connects it to and no longer have to fight through with a Gummi ship later on.
The game has Sora going around various worlds that are all Disney related. Some of the worlds are The Land of Dragons from Mulan or Olympus Coliseum from Hercules. Of course, the worlds being Disney worlds it includes various Disney characters and follow the storyline but in a twist because it has to fit with the Kingdom Hearts story. Some of the Disney characters become your ally and some just randomly helps you out but nonetheless it helps you get through the world. After you complete worlds you also might receive Keyblades. Certain Keyblades give you an added ability and increased attack and magic. Keyblades are not only acquired by completing worlds but by doing certain missions or quests. Sora is usually able to equip one Keyblade at a time but can equip two once a Form has been activated.
Kingdom Hearts II graphics are much like Kingdom Hearts graphics but they seem a bit smoother. The game switches from 2 major types of graphics. One has the characters just moving their mouths up and down with very little facial expressions. These types of character dialogues are used for mostly non vocal cut scenes. The second has much cleaner graphics with characters actually lip synching to what they actually say. These are widely used throughout the game and gives the character a bit more life. However, another type of graphics method is used for the intro and the ending of Kingdom Hearts II and that’s CGI. These animations look very real and very detailed but are quite short and only exist in the end and beginning of the game. The music is done very well with Original music arranged by Yoko and some licensed music inserted in the game. Some of the licensed music includes Pirates! and This is Halloween. The game contains some perilous music, angelic, and very soothing sounds. The game probably contains over 30 tracks and all of them are excellently made. The English dubbing of the character voices are also done very well with some original actors for the Disney characters. However, some of the Final Fantasy characters are done some what horribly and could’ve used better actors. Overall the sound of the game sounds and plays great.
Overall this game feels like an amazing RPG and in fact it actually plays very well. There are certain parts of the game where you could understand the story or the characters a bit more but you can basically find that throughout the online fan forums. This is a RPG that a player definitely should not miss out on.