Kingdom Hearts 2
One of the biggest collaborations in the videogame industry returns with an even larger sequel. When the first Kingdom Hearts game was announced it completely blew my mind. I mean what could be better than Square and Disney teaming up to create an action RPG that blended Final Fantasy and Disney films?
The game featured a young boy named Sora who was chosen for an adventure by a powerful weapon known as the Keyblade. The plot got a little convoluted at times but I'll try to do it justice. In the universe that Kingdom Hearts takes place in there are several individual worlds that are all separate from each other. The forces of light and darkness hold dominion over these places and the hearts of the people that reside in them. When King Mickey turns up missing all heck breaks loose and Sora finds himself partnering up with Donald and Goofy to save the universe as it were.
Creatures known as Heartless keep popping up out of nowhere and their actions are controlled by several of Disney's most popular villains. As the game went on we learned that the Heartless are actually entities formed by the darkness in people's hearts. With the Keyblade in hand Sora had to travel the many worlds to save their princesses and lock their gateways to prevent the Heartless from taking over. In the meantime he was searching for his childhood friends Riku and Kairi. I don't want to say anything more than that in case you haven't played the first Kingdom Hearts because in all honesty you should play that game before playing this one. Not experiencing the first adventure could change your perception of the sequel and certain events won't mean as much.
When you start playing Kingdom Hearts II you'll be thrown for a loop if you made your way through the first game. There are hints and glimpses at the world abound but you actually play as a kid named Roxas instead of Sora (at least for the first four hours or so). It turns out that Roxas is a Nobody, which is a form of Heartless that we learn more about here. A Nobody is basically an empty shell created from the by product of a strong person becoming a Heartless. In this latest Square-Enix/Disney masterpiece a group of Nobodies known as Organization XIII is the dominating antagonistic force. Familiar faces come around eventually and just like the first game the story gets pretty convoluted at times.
Gameplay:
The first Kingdom Hearts game laid out all of the groundwork for things to come. There was a great sense of action, the RPG elements were there (though a little light), the storytelling was amazing, and most importantly the game had heart (no pun intended). Just about every aspect of the Final Fantasy and Disney worlds collided in a strange yet beautiful way that worked wonders with the gameplay. There was something magical about being able to team up with familiar characters to fight familiar villains. This helped keep the otherwise simplistic combat from becoming too boring.
I say simplistic because while this is a game for everybody, it is one designed with the younger crowd in mind. Combat gets broken down into two categories: melee and magic. As Sora you have to repeatedly press X to attack your enemy and in most cases that's the only button that you have to press. It sounds pretty dull on paper but once you start adding the ability modifiers into the picture things get much more interesting.
Sora (and each of his party members) has a limited supply of Ability Points that are used to assign special skills. As a character gains experience and levels up they have access to more skills and their maximum points are raised. Through the menu skills can be assigned easily enough though you have to bear in mind that each is associated with a particular cost. For instance if you want Sora to gain the guard ability it costs you 2 AP. If you have a max of 20 AP that means you only have 18 more points to play with.
The amount of skills that you can pick up really extends the combat beyond the simple pressing of X. My particular favorite maneuvers involved catapulting an enemy into the air and then launching into an aerial combo. The beauty of this system however is the fact that you can customize your characters as you see fit. It isn't just Sora that can utilize AP points either and throughout the game you'll be able to customize your party and adjust the frequency of which they use their commands.
More options open up to you as you progress through the adventure as well. For instance the use of magic is pretty self-explanatory. You have a spell that costs a certain amount and once you run out of MP you have to wait for the meter to recharge before you can cast spells again. The spell progression is fairly linear, as is most of the leveling up in the game, but it's dispersed enough so it doesn't feel that way. The magic gauge also ties into something called "Drive" and "Limit".
On the HUD near Sora's health display is a number and a yellow bar. This represents your Drive gauge. By activating the command through the combat menu Sora will whip out two Keyblades (that's right, TWO Keyblades!) and gain a slew of attacks. This is a great asset to have in battles but once the Drive gauge depletes you're back to being regular Sora. Once empty it will refill itself slowly over time as you fight but one thing to keep in mind is that if your magic meter is empty the Drive gauge will fill faster. It adds an element of strategy to some of the later more difficult battles.
The Limit command is a feature that is tied into teaming up with specific characters and you're ability to press the triangle button for a Reaction Command. During battles there are certain circumstances that will allow for special and powerful attacks or defensive maneuvers. The triangle button will flash on screen and the command menu will display for a second the move that you'll do if you press it. Once you press the command an animated sequence will commence that sometimes requires you to press triangle again or just sit back and watch what happens.
In regards to the combat it's also worth mentioning that the lock-on system and camera are much more functional this time around. It's not that they were completely broken in the first Kingdom Hearts but they did prove to be cumbersome at times. From start to finish I don't think I had a single problem with it here.
The Gummi Ship is also back with more gummi blocks and things to shoot. For the uninitiated the Gummi is a type of ship that takes Sora and company from world to world. Along the way you have to take part in stages that are light versions of Gradius or R-Type style shooters. You can also customize your ship with blocks, weaponry and miscellaneous pieces that you find throughout the various stages. In Kingdom Hearts II the gummi ship feels a little better with some more user friendly mechanics though I can't help but feel this feature could have been omitted all together. The Sora dungeon sections and the gummi sections don't have a lot to do with each other and to be honest the sense of reward from making a powerful ship isn't as strong as making a powerful character.
The various worlds also keep things from getting old thanks to different concepts and gameplay elements inside. For instance at the Coliseum you can unlock a fighting tournament in Hades' underworld, in the Land of Dragons there is a Morale meter to keep an eye on while in combat, and in Hollow Bastion you can play with a skateboard. Despite a change in scenery and tone each world offers something new to do and really makes exploring worth while. You'll want to get to the next place to see what's going on there and later on in the game when you have to backtrack it's kept from getting monotonous.
If you haven't figured it out yet, Kingdom Hearts II plays much better than the original in just about every conceivable way. From the pacing of the story to some intelligent level design, each part of the experience has been refined since we last stepped into Sora's large shoes. The only times I got bored were with the forced Gummi bits, but I don't think that's every going to change. This is one of the best action RPGs on the market and a must have for fans of the original or Square-Enix/Disney in general.
Graphics:
Gameplay wasn't the only improvement that the Kingdom Hearts series has seen with its new inception. As you'd expect from a Square-Enix game the cut scenes look fantastic. The kicker here is that they use the in game engine to get the point across. The characters are expressive, the textures are better and the animation is unbelievable. With the many different styles in animation and art that Disney movies sport seeing them all masterfully handled here is remarkable.
Each stage offers little tweaks to the design and I was really impressed with the attention to detail. Subtle things like explosions in the Land of Dragons to the shrubbery critters in the courtyard of Disney Castle add a ton of flavor to the game. Specialty stages like the Tron area, Steamboat Willie, and Pirates of the Caribbean will take your breath away. The menus are easy to navigate and the HUD is a synch to read on the fly as well. The visual presentation of a videogame doesn't get a whole lot better for the PS2 than we see in Kingdom Hearts II.
Audio:
Not quite as impressive as the gameplay and graphics is the audio. It's not like there is any one area where things go particularly wrong it's just that when compared to the rest of the game it doesn't feel as polished. The music is fantastic and the sound effects are effective, yet familiar. The problem lies in the voice acting. Often times some lines are deadpanned or the character's voice is a poor imitation of the original. At other points the dialogue came across like it was poorly translated, or maybe I just didn't get the joke. This section is about on par with the original Kingdom Hearts if you're comparing the two.
Conclusion:
Great gameplay. Great graphics. Great story. Better than average sound. That's the shortest and best way to summarize Kingdom Hearts II. There are so many improvements over the original that I wasn't even expecting when I started playing. I was hoping to have about the same experience as I had while playing the first game, but I was shocked to see that just about every bit was improved upon. Fans of the franchise probably already have this in their collection. If you haven't had the chance to get into it yet you owe it to yourself to.