i just love Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts game Review
"The closer you get to the light, the larger your shadow becomes."
When stars begin to disappear and 14-year-old Sora's home, Destiny Islands, is engulfed in a freak storm, he must journey across worlds to find his friends, Riku and Kairi. As master of the mysterious Keyblade, Sora must battle the soul-eating Heartless and discover where true strength lies.
Kingdom Hearts is the first collaboration between powerhouses of animation and gaming, Disney and Square Enix. A fun, light-entertainment role-playing game featuring cameos by a plethora of familiar characters, from Cloud Strife and Sephiroth to Hades, Tinkerbell, Jack Skellington, and Maleficent.
NOTES: For all Disney characters appearing in Kingdom Hearts, see Disney Characters.
Story & Playability
The following review is for the US release of Kingdom Hearts 2.
Disney and Square team up once again to make the sequel to their best selling Kingdom Hearts. The first game proved to be a surprise hit without a doubt. It was creative, brought back a lot of memories of not only disney past, but many square games past. Quite frankly, it was also fun. Kingdom Hearts 2 sticks with that for the most part and proves to be a decent game.
The story is fairly straight forwards, just like its predecesor. Sora has returned in search of King Mickey and his childhood friends Riku and Kairi. For those that played the first KH, they would remember that after sealing the door to Kingdom Hearts, those three disappeared. Now he searches for the three of them so that he can go back to his life before all of this happened. Of course nothing goes as smoothly as he'd want as a new threat has appeared in the form of Organization XIII and the Nobodies. Nobodies are the left over shell of a person after they have become a heartless, so you end up with two bad things from one. Organization XIII is a group made up of higher level Nobodies who are actually quite lifelike in every way, except that they have no heart. While Sora searches for his friends, he is out to find out what Organization XIII is up to, and to of course finish off the last remaining heartless.
KH2 is not winning any awards any time soon for ground breaking story. In fact it is in itself quite weak. You will hop from Disney world to Disney world, reliving moments from the movies... adding in of course heartless and nobodies, rinse and repeat. Then when you finally get to the ending sequences, you'll get so sick and tired of hearing the words 'heart' and 'friends' you'll probably need a break. It works to probably please children, but at times proves a bit darker for even them. But for adult players, the story leaves a lot to be desired.
Rating:
Graphics
Graphics are a mixed bag in this game, which is surprising considering my first line of any Square game review usually involves them having a deal with the Devil. The cutscenes are nothing short of amazing. They are well done, very fluid animation and solid character designs brought out by some of the most polished polygon action you can possibly pull out of a PS2. In game graphics on the other hand... its the first Kingdom Hearts all over again. There were no improvements made on the ingame graphics, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we are talking about a sequel made years later with no improvements.
Character designs are just about the same, only slightly aged for our main characters. The Disney characters are kept accurate to their animation counterparts. I will give credit where credit is due though in that there is no slowdown! Making a PS2 game and not having any slowdown at all is a huge accomplishment. There will be sometimes quite a few things going on the screen at any given time, and it will not slow down... ever.
Rating:
Sound
The sound department is also a mixed bag. I will be the first to say that the Hikaru Utada opening to this game DOES NOT FIT! Throw rocks now because while it was a good song, it did not fit the sequence one bit. Placement of music is just as important as the music itself. The rest of the BGM worked it's magic where it needed to, but I didn't like the fact that some of the exact same music from the first KH were used in this one. With the amount of time taken to make this game, they could have at least created an all new soundtrack. Maybe I'm asking too much. I will say that when the music pumped up for a fight, it was very fitting of the atmosphere that you were in.
Vocally, its KH1 all over again. That's no complaint, just that if you liked the voice acting in the first KH, you'll love it here. I was actually surprised that they didn't change voices after so long between games. Usually it's pretty hard to get everybody back to do it again, but they managed. There are some that you'll notice aren't the originals, like the Genie is still not Robin Williams, but even still it sounds a lot like the genie from the original Aladin. No one really stuck out as a bad voice actor, which is surprising coming from me, the man who won't watch or play anything in English unless that option is not available.
Rating:
Fun
I would first like to say one thing... this game is easy. In fact it is borderline very easy. I played on Pride Mode (the hardest mode available) as soon as I got the game. It's not that I was cocky, but I figured that I might as well do it on the hardest difficulty so that if I didn't like the game that much, I wouldn't have to play it again. Even still, on the hardest mode it is still really easy. You'll die from cheap shots during normal battles, but surprisingly bosses can never kill you. You may get killed by a boss, but lo and behold if that happens, King Mickey can come in and revive you over and over and over again. When you get control of King Mickey to revive you, you'll see that he is so much of a bad ass that you'll always be succesful in resurrecting Sora.
The gameplay has also stayed almost exactly the same as its predecessor. It is still the mash X fest... the Dynasty Warriors of RPG's if you must. The typical battle rhtym goes like this; see enemy, lock on, hit X really quickly, kill enemy, heal if necessary and move on. The only time this will change will be if there is a triangle event that pops up. This I think was a nice addition, but something that made the game far too easy. You can be in the middle of a group and see the triangle command pop up and all of the sudden you are an unstoppable beast flying through the air killing everything in a mile radius. This also holds true for bosses. Hit X quickly, use triangle commands, let King Mickey revive if necessary and continue on. That is gameplay.
The extras to the game are also few and far between. There are no more trinity spots with hidden items, no dalmations to find, and item synthesis is super easy now. The pain of finding items to create Ultima Weapon is over, it is now maybe a 2 hour process of hunting down a few easy to find items. Leveling up has become easy in that there are quite a few easily exploitable areas of easy experience. The colisseum isn't an epic sidequest like it was before, just a mere shadow of it's former self. The thing I'll say that's good is that good ole Sephiroth is still here, and yes he is still as painful to beat as ever.
KH2 was a fun game, and it will eat hour after hour without you even noticing it. But quite frankly it just wasn't that great of a game. When you play it you may think how great it is, but once all is said and done you'll probably come to the same conclusion I have. I couldn't play it again simply because the first 3 hours of the game are the most boring hours I've ever had playing a video game. That is not me exaggerating either. Fans of almost any video game genre will enjoy this, but game of the year this isn't
Rating:
Final Verdict
6.3333 (average)
Reviewed by shoujoboy, Apr 14, 2006
Comments
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13thsephiroth Apr 15, 2006
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chore-boy Apr 15, 2006
Both of them were just too easy...
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Inferno88 Apr 15, 2006
I like the first KH betta, it's lot more fun
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Vanomega Apr 16, 2006
I like KH too. I beat both the first and the Chain of Memories with Sora and Riku. I keep hearing that KH2 is not so easy, but I think it just depends on how good are you at it.
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Yunnie85 Apr 17, 2006
it's a good game, at first i thought, "urgh what was square thinking? teaming up with disney?!?" you know what, it was a great idea..
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Riku7 Apr 17, 2006
I Beat Kingdom hearts 2 But i think the first one is harder because you cant use drives and the levels but kh2 is pretty awesome.
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shinigamisoul Apr 18, 2006
KH2 wont come out here in europe until at least October =( I cant wait for it to come. But I loved the first game and will probably like the second.
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DragonNeko May 03, 2006
I love Kingdom Hearts 2^^ They improved everything in the second. I can't wait to beat it and see the end!
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cassandraronald May 21, 2006
i have not played KH before but it sounds interesting, i have only read the manga on it
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ctworld Banned Member May 22, 2006
i cant wait until i get kingdom hearts 2 ^^ it's gonna be so cool
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midnightred Jul 30, 2006
yeah i already beat the second one but i havent played the chains of memories yet ..........sad. anyway KH2 is bad azz!donald and goofy were just annoying to me but it was awsome!>_< I think it was better than the first one.this review was cool have a cookie (shoves down throat)
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enchantressinthedark Oct 12, 2006
Wow harsh, but pretty accurate ^^ Kh2 has lost something from kh1, cause there's always a different feeling when you play both games. The storyline should have scored a lil higher because its pretty original and I've never imagined that the connection between light and darkness is so complex ^_^'
Well, Sephie's not that painful to beat, he's a lot more easier to beat compared to KH1 where he's more agile.
Overall, its a great review ^^ But if you try not to have high expectations for the game, its not that bad after all :)
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sin-shenlong Mar 18, 2007
ok, first i i disagree that the story is sraight foward like the first, actually ill have to give the writers props for giving the game a considerably darker tone . The thought of hearts and friendships are still there, but the inclusion of the new characters such as Diz and organisation 13 made the game feel more adult. and i especially love hw the introduction is so confusing yet everything comes together at the games climax good stuff. The graphics , are the same yes, however the new worlds and characters have better designs that the first (except for cloud strife i have no idea why they changed cloud strifes design from the first one in my opinion KH1 cloud is the tightest looking one, and shouldnt have been swapped with the advent children one tsk) bt the rest of the characters especially sora and gang look better in terms of design.Sound wise, yes hey used the same music in some times, but there are new additions, and they have a darker tone than the first , also theres a more epic score this time around (especially in those 'war scenes' that happen in hollow bastion really nice. Sanctuary fits perfectly with the beginning sequence as both are beautiful and captures the atmosphere. Finally gameplay, ill agree the game is easy, but some boss fights are challenging , the first battles with organisation 13 were really difficult (demyx wasnt such a winp after all lol) and i had to use some strategy so it wasnt always a mash x fest, altho the mickey mouse thing was annoyin . anyway good review altho i think it deserved an 8
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ninasun100 Aug 21, 2007
Finally..someone who ACTUALLY sees KHII for what it truly is!
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hello-me Dec 19, 2008
Now the kingdom heart 2 final mix is really cool. Sora is able fight all the members of the Organization XIII. A new boss is added too, he is Terra a character from Kingdom Heart 3.
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