Kingdom Hearts 2 improves on the original in almost every way, with a more involving story to boot.
User Rating: 9.1 | Kingdom Hearts II PS2
Kingdom Hearts 2 continues the great tradition that the original game had of perfectly blending Disney and Square themes into a story involving a young boy named Sora and his attunement to a special weapon called the “Keyblade”. The great thing about the sequel is that the game still carries many of the qualities that the first game had done so well, and manages to either fix or greatly improve some of the flaws the original have, providing what is easily a superior game to the first in almost every aspect, and remains a game that can be recommended to those who may not be the largest Disney or Square fans, although those who are will certainly get much more out of the experience. Kingdom Hearts 2 starts where the Gameboy Advance game Chain of Memories left off, with Sora waking up from what seems to be a deep sleep, that appears to have lasted close to a year. Sora and his companions, Goofy and Donald, have finally woken from this sleep in a Mansion located called Twilight Town. They cannot remember anything that actually happened in Castle Oblivion, or anything regarding the Organization(now referred to as Organization XIII). All they know is that heartless have once again begun to threaten more worlds, and now there is a new threat in the form of Organization XIII, and what they pose in relation to the Heartless and the main characters of the game is part of the mystery that steps us into the new adventures of our familiar friends. Without revealing any other spoilers, the sequel relies heavily on the story started in the gba installment, while providing an even more intricate plot that remains interesting, but not a bumbling mess when the game is through, and is one of the reasons that Kingdom Hearts 2 is such a fantastic game. Kingdom Hearts 2 also continues the tradition of bouncing from world to world constantly clearing various zones and bosses, but the game has a much more streamlined feel, which leaves you wandering less and less and lets you do what is important which is advance your character and the story. Although sometimes it seems to hold your hand a bit too much, overall it improves one of the main complaints of the original game, so this isn’t really much of a drawback. One small complaint initially is the size of the zones you travel to seem a bit on the small size, so the exploration factor is somewhat limited, but you do return to these zones later and uncover more areas, so rest assured later in the game those feelings are put to rest for the most part. Many of the worlds in the sequel are also reproduced again from the first game, but there are many new areas and content to keep everyone satisfied as well. So for every trip to Agrabah or Halloween Town, there is the Pride Lands of Lion King or the old technologically advanced world of Tron to explore, which is definitely a welcome addition. While the first game certainly had some colorful, but at times slightly disappointing graphics, the sequel does a pretty good job of improving on it’s predecessor. Many of the zones and areas you travel to are recreated incredibly well, such as the world of Tron, with it’s unique outfits for the main characters and interesting level design that helps properly reflect the popular 80's sci-fi film. While the actual character models have been improved upon to be much better, the actual backgrounds and areas that you travel across sometimes seem a bit grainy or bland, but this could just be attributed to the aging ps2 hardware. No worries, as while it can certainly be a small turn-off, you spend so much time appreciating the in-game scenes with the beautiful character models, as well as the addition of some incredibly amazing CG sequences, that you quickly forget the backgrounds, at least until you return to traveling across the various zones. One of the main gripes of the original game was some of it’s more repetitious or unimpressive game mechanics. Many will remember the numerous times you had to face off against more and more heartless while you trekked across the various worlds and tried to find your way around, but this time it seems they went a long way to making it feel a bit more active and not as redundant. In regards to encounters, the game has drastically reduced how many times enemies respawn and such, so constantly having to comb specific areas for an item or treasures isn’t much of a chore thanks to this improved design, so less time is spent trying to run away from fights or plowing through them, and more on the actual game and facing enemies as your progress. The actual gameplay of Kingdom Hearts 2 has also been improved slightly to give it a less repetitive feeling. The original was always feeling like a button mashing festival, but this time around Square ingeniously included various attacks that can be executed via the triangle button, causing the character to use a reaction command, which are various abilities that can range from a simple block to a multi-button combo involving some very intricate moves that in the actual gameplay could not be produced by the player, but makes for a very intriguing set of attacks that makes the game a beauty to play. Unfortunately, the game abilities are very easy to pull off and the buttons can continually be hit, and in the case of multi-reaction command attacks, you can just continually pull off these maneuvers without ever having to worry about the timing, so the skill or joy of pulling these off is really only for show. It would have been nice had they adopted a time oriented method or various button combinations, similar to other games like God of War or Resident Evil 4's method of reaction commands. Magic is also an unfortunate victim it seems in the game, as it’s uses are mainly just for the occasional ranged attack at times, or more likely healing, so you are usually resorted to just race up to enemies and slam away at the attack button with the occasional reaction command thrown in. Surprisingly, the game doesn’t get old from the constant single button attack method, as the combat still manages to remain fun and other enemies have some different strategies associated with them that forces the game to keep you entertained.. This time around, we also experience a newly voiced Sora, in some respects, with the progression of Haley Joel Osment’s voice into his more “manly” years. Along with many other cast members from the original game, and other Disney voices included (James Woods as Hades, or the late Pat Morita as the Emperor), the game continues to shine with some of the best talent in any business, due much in part to Disney’s original feature films, but also largely in part to SE’s ability to get some great talent behind their main characters. Many of the voice-overs who don’t have original voices do a pretty decent job, like the voice if Jack Sparrow, which while it unfortunately couldn’t be done by Johnny Depp, still manages to pull off the character fairly well, even if a bit slower and less brash at times. A few voices don’t really manage to make it well, but these are very few and do not take away from what is a very good set of talented voice actors. Musically the game continues the same great tradition of using many of the popular tunes from the associated Disney films, while managing to score some great original tracks that really stick in your head. The performance of “Sanctuary” by Japanese Pop star Utada really leads well into the game with an intro that combines with it to produce what is easily one of the best game introductions of all time, a meshing of music and cg that shows some well planted ideas and could pass as an intriguing music video were it displayed on a regular music video channel nowadays. The gummi ship does make its return to Kingdom Hearts 2, and while it sometimes feels about as redundant as the first game, it’s still a fun segue between areas, and fortunately it only has to be done once, unless you want to continuously build new gummi ships or used pre-built models to clear out areas and get more treasure for better ships and scores and such. The areas don’t really seem to provide any real purpose or have any progress goals in mind that can help you, but at least it’s not as tiresome as the original. As far as other mini-games are concerned, the only other major gripe about this fantastic sequel is the game really seems to be littered at times with almost too many mini-games, with many areas based around it. While it certainly keeps things fresh and new, I would have liked to seen more thought placed on the actual main gameplay portion rather than throwing together a meddling of mini-games to break up the monotony that seems to plague the game from time to time. Regardless, they aren’t crap, and do remain pretty fun so while the inclusion of these games wasn’t necessarily expected, they don’t take too much away from the game either. Overall, Kingdom Hearts 2 is easily a game that will please fans of the PS2 original and it’s GBA continuation, providing a good setup for a fantastic storytelling in the PS2 sequel. It provides more of the same great game but stepped up in a number of ways to provide a more seamless and incredibly fun game that lasts the entire game, and could even win over those individuals who were turned off by the occasionally annoying flaws that plagued the first game from time to time, while providing those who enjoyed the first game a more complete and wonderfully continuation of what is one of the best new original series to come along in a great while. 
