Kingdom Hearts 2 is the sequel to 2002’s Kingdom Hearts, and was the wait worth it: Oh! Yeah!
User Rating: 8.9 | Kingdom Hearts II PS2
Kingdom Hearts 2 is the sequel to 2002’s Kingdom Hearts, and was the wait worth it: Oh! Yeah! Kingdom Hearts 2 story picks up where the first game left off, but players of the Game Boy Advance will understand the opening a bit better since it leans upon the story line from Chain of Memories. The game starts with Roxas and with Roxas you spend 3hrs hours learning the basics. After the long three hours of waiting you are put back in control of Sora and his party members Donald and Goofy. After get filled in on what the Heartless (the bad guys) are up to Sora embarks on another quest with Donald and Goofy to find his friend Riku and King Mickey. The graphics look amazing. The game play has been taken to the next level. The first thing you notice is the camera has been pushed back and you have full control of it with the right analog stick. This makes combat a lot easy and you rarely have to fight the camera during battles. The way to equip weapons and armor is set up the same way it was in the first Kingdom Hearts and the way you can equip abilities has been tweak just a bit. The game also adds a nice set of cool battle features. Instead of just mashing the X button like in the first game, Sora can now used the triangle button to unleashed high powered move on an enemy. Sora can now use limits with Donald and Goofy, which are cool moves to crush your enemies. But the newest and coolest feature is the drives. Sora can “fuse” with Donald or Goofy or both of them to gain two keyblades or high power magic. With all these new features the battle system is way better than the first game. As Sora you will return to new worlds and old worlds, although each world is “new”, even the returning ones. The new worlds look great and are big and open to explore. The old worlds look total different and they are bigger than their Kingdom Heart 1 counterparts. To keep you busy on your quest there are mini games in every world. There are skateboard challenges and other small games to keep you buy. The Winne the Pooh book returns for its second round of mini games and their much more interesting and fun to play. The weirdest mini game is the ones in the Atlantica world (The Little Mermaid). You get to watch Sora sing while you press the correct buttons on the screen. But if mini games are not your style there is the coliseum. This time the coliseum is much more interesting especially with the new battle system. The coliseum also is much more fast paced than its predecessor. The game does suffer from a few flaws. One, being the length of the game, true fans of the first game should have no problem beating the game with only a few deaths. The hardest mode is Proud but even this mode feels too easy and doesn’t offer a challenge. The second problem is also the story line, although the beginning of the game offers a new story, once you start as Sora it feels like you lose sight of the main story until halfway through. The final flaw is the lack of replay value. There is only one optional boss fight, though there is a ton of mini games, fans of the first game will be disappointed by the lack of extra bosses. Bottom line: Kingdom Hearts 2 is a great sequel despite a few flaws which will be overlooked by the true Kingdom Hearts fans. 
