I just like Kingdom Hearts.
This review contains spoilers
Long. Significant, later-story spoilers marked after a certain point. This is a review of the original AND final mix versions.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts 2 was via the 1.5/2.5 collection released on PC via EGS. I recommend that a new player plays the game using a PC or an 8th or 9th generation console (not including the Switch) for the best experience. Unfortunately, this is also one of the games in this collection that is, still to this day, somewhat broken on PC as it has persistent crashes and random little issues that may hinder play, but it is easy to fix using online patches such as Kingdom Hearts Re:Freshed or Re:Fined. I also used a mod to revert all enemy colors to their original color scheme from the non-Final Mix versions.
I played on the Critical difficulty, and this is the one time I recommend anyone, even new players, to do the same. The abilities and general progression of Critical can make the game feel better early on, and the challenge is most fun with stakes. If the difficulty is too much, or you're concerned that you can't do it, there is no shame in playing Beginner or Normal.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is the platonic ideal of a character-action RPG, with a sharp emphasis of a power fantasy and combat opportunities available to you in a pinch, and a speed that always feels just right. I still hold that, to this day, there has never been an action-focused RPG (not including fromsoft titles) that feels nearly as good as Kingdom Hearts 2 does at any moment.
In this game you start in Twilight Town as... Who the hell is Roxas? Did I miss something? Well, no, we didn't, and this confusing introduction is deliberate, and in my opinion, done very well. You start off as Roxas, enjoying his summer break, and learning that something in his typical life just seems off, eventually culminating into the player being reintroduced back into the body and control of Sora. Within this introduction, we are re-taught mechanics from the first game, such as locking on and jumping, and new ones, like having the Information tab that lets the player know of their objective, and most notably Reaction Commands, in which you press the button corresponding to the top of the command list in green, in order to interact with something. In the world, this is including things like chests, context sensitive locations, and more, while in combat these are time sensitive skills that are often, in some way, required to succeed in combat. While this may make the game seem like it is a "Press Triangle to Win" game, it does properly feel like you are given more options and opportunities to play with within combat, it works very well.
Much like Kingdom Hearts 1, you are given the option to choose a weapon within the Dive to the Heart, and a little bit prior to that. The first one simply gives you a permanent +1 stat to Strength, Magic or Defense, and this is up to the player's choice, but I personally like Strength here. As for the dive to the heart, unlike 1, you don't have to "discard" a weapon. Once again, I like the shield here the most, but magic is also a great option. This latter option changes the order in which you unlock abilities, and I personally like having access to defensive abilities earlier.
This game generally revolves around Sora, Donald and Goofy traversing a variety of worlds from Disney properties, but instead of one main visit to each world, you instead have two shorter visits to each disney world, more visits for other worlds. When visiting the world, instead of the same gummi mission in each instance of travel, you instead have the world "locked" by a gummi mission that necessitates completion before unlocking it, being able to warp freely to that world. Gummi missions in this game are also much more interesting as they have more going for it, there's more threats as well as some missions that have "bosses" that must be taken care of. Regardless, in all cases the game improves on gummi ship navigation by solely not forcing you to make every trip (in the early game) a mission.
Worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 are much easier to traverse, given that you now move quite a bit faster and have more movement options. While many may point out that the worlds are a downgrade due to it being less reliant on exploration or platforming, I think that this also means that worlds in KH2 facilitate combat better, and are paced nicely with the rest of the game. As for the visits being split into two, this typically has the first visit be more Disney oriented, and the second visit more focused on main Kingdom Hearts enemies, with the exception of Agrabah; it is flipped. This works really nicely in my opinion, it allows the main villains of Kingdom Hearts 2 to more properly take a front seat when they are needed there, it feels like the main villains are more involved throughout 2 than they would have been before. Beyond that, worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 also do not have the same variance in quality as 1, where I can't say there is any (required) world that I genuinely dislike as opposed to 1's Agrabah and Atlantica.
But enough about worlds, how does the gameplay stack up? It's completely stacked, that's for sure. There is much more of a variety of abilities that can really change the way you can fight, with combo initiators, finishers, extenders, and all of that yummy juicy stuff, it all flows really well. Unlike in 1, unlockable keyblades are no longer simple stat sticks of damage, MP, length and an invisible crit chance. In this game, they all have abilities that can make your combat much nicer. This can be as simple as extending your ground or air combo by 1 step, or as significant as increasing your damage depending on how many hits you can get in. Last, but certainly not least, KH2 introduces drive forms, and a drive gauge that allows you to expend drive points (and temporarily disables a combat partner or two) to transform into a form that makes you incredibly powerful for a short time. Valor form is a melee-focused form that can have you stick your enemies into long combos, Wisdom form prioritizes magic, and turns your keyblade into a little magical machine gun when you attack, and changes the properties of your magic spells. Master form does a little bit of both, and Final form does a lot of both. Final mix also introduces Limit form, which changes your magic into the KH1 limit abilities such as Ars Arcanum or Sonic Blade. In all forms except Wisdom and Limit form, you can equip another keyblade, with all of its stats and ability fully intact! The punishment for using these forms too much is Anti-Form, in which Sora transforms into a heartless-like being and can dish out incredibly long combos, but is weaker and can't perform many defensive actions. Aside from Anti-Form, all of these forms have XP to gain within them, and each level can give you an upgrade to Growth abilities, such as High Jump, Dodge Roll, or Glide. There is no shortage of things you can do with all of these things at your disposal.
Magic has changed quite a bit, too. Instead of having individual magic points, each spell using 1-2 points, you have an MP bar with a double-triple digit number, each spell costing 5-20(?) per cast. The exception is Cure, which will always use rest of the MP bar. When MP is emptied, it goes into "MP Recharge" where it slowly fills back up to full. Some spells like Fire also have an AOE spinning effect, and some spells such as Aero, Stop and Gravity are replaced by Magnet and the incredibly powerful Reflect. The change here is intended to punish players for using Cure too much, and it works, although spells like Reflect I feel are a little too cheap, as it is genuinely that powerful of a tool. I do think that this change overall is very nice.
The story in KH2, without shedding much detail, is awesome! A handful of new lore details are (re-)introduced and it eventually turns into an epic of gargantuan proportions, involving Sora traversing worlds to stop what is possibly his greatest foes yet.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of my favorite games ever made. It has everything I could have ever asked for in a sequel, and it does so much within its gameplay time, with lots of amazing post-game content to spare (in FM). I recommend anyone pick up 1.5/2.5 remix to play this game. Final mix is a huge step up in quality, the original game would be a 9/10 for simply not being FM.
Final Mix major differences:
This version of the game, previously locked to Japan, adds 14+ high quality bosses, an entirely new post-game area to explore, a puzzle system where you collect pieces around the worlds, a couple progression changes, the Critical difficulty mode, and new enemies! This is a ton of bonus content, most of which is the best of this game. There are quite a few new cutscenes, some of which may make no sense without further context in later games, but this is worth it. As stated prior, like KH1FM, this game also adds color palette swaps that I am not generally fond of, and cannot be reverted in the console versions unfortunately. Regardless, this is unmistakeably the definitive version of the game.
Story spoilers below!
One of the most interesting things in Kingdom Hearts 2 is the expansion of Nobodies as a concept. They were present in CoM (and 1FM), but they were not fully explored, as they were described as simply "not belonging to light or darkness" as opposed to being a fleshed out part of the universe, and instead are the bodies that are left behind by the heart. When the heart is removed from a body, it creates a Heartless, and leaves behind a Nobody. This also explains who the hell Roxas is, as when Sora turned the keyblade on himself, he turned into a heartless and this action also created Roxas and Namine with Kairi's freed heart.
With that, Organization XIII, a faction of high class nobodies lead by Xemnas, the nobody of Ansem, is my favorite villain faction in the franchise. Portraying a powerful group of emotionless people with the goal of recreating a Kingdom Hearts by relying on Sora to free multitudes of hearts from Emblem (manufactured) Heartless. I think that Kingdom Hearts 2 in turn feels more "epic" when facing off against these incredibly powerful foes across the game. Their presence in CoM is also great, and it explains why there aren't, well, 13 of them in 2's main quest. These boss fights against characters like Demyx, Xaldin, Xigbar, and most especially Xemnas, are some of the coolest boss fights ever, with the booming presence of Yoko Shimomura's soundtrack in each fight.
While I think I miss having the original Hollow Bastion from KH1, I love the original worlds in this game. Twilight town feels appropriately comfortable, and the stage setting using Roxas and his friends, while mysterious, makes it all feel worth playing. Hollow Bastion (or more accurately, Radiant Garden) is a huge sprawl of a mountainous town with a less warm color scheme to boot than Twilight Town. Both of these worlds are the equivalent of KH1's Traverse Town, in which you visit them often for new story elements and to discover more about the shady Organization that seems to be tugging on every string to their plan. Lastly, my favorite world in the franchise, The World that Never Was, is the final world of Kingdom Hearts 2. It's absolutely beautiful, you have a dark, almost cyberpunk-aesthetic city, teeming with heartless, with an eye-piercing castle in the horizon, a castle for Nobodies, the home of Organization XIII. The geometry of the castle representing a clan of nothingness simply makes no sense compared to the imposing, but structured city. One may complain that this location seems like a boss gauntlet, or where they really shove most of the plot of the game in the last 10% of the main quest, but I just absolutely love this setting, and having the game culminate here just makes absolute sense.
The game ends with you taking on the rest of the standing Organization XIII, but you still have business to settle with a kid, much like you, who just wanted his life back, as it now had meaning to him. Prior to reaching the castle, you face off against Roxas in a dive to the heart, a cutscene in the original turned into a full-fledged boss fight in Final Mix. While this fight takes place, Roxas' theme, The Other Promise, pulls at your heartstrings, this fight is sort of tragic in a way. The fight ends with Roxas not perishing, but accepting that Sora deserves his life too. This is arguably a scene that is just as iconic as the final fight vs. Xemnas, but one with great personal stakes as opposed to a potentially universe-ending event. This is a scene that, like Sora freeing his and Kairi's heart in the first game, becomes more and more important as the franchise goes on, and it absolutely deserves it.
Now, if you're playing the original version, you're left with one fairly simple superboss with Sephiroth, who I feel is much easier than in the first game, albeit much cooler. However, if you're playing Final Mix, you're treated with 14 superbosses and a whole new post-game area, found near the castle of Hollow Bastion, perhaps contained within it, is the Cave of Remembrance. You can fight significantly easier versions of a few of these superbosses by challenging the "Absent Silhouettes" you may find around a few worlds, but these are not the real deal. The Cavern of Remembrance can be quite challenging, you are expected to have all of your growth abilities leveled up to the maximum in order to traverse it, and the cave has a surfeit of high level enemies that can chop you up if you're not careful. At the end of this gauntlet is a terminal that can be activated to reveal all 13 members of Organization XIII in data, assumed to be when they were at their strongest. Some fights are more challenging than others, but none of them are a slouch, you have to be at your A-game to push yourself to victory. At last, you can find this game's ultimate challenge at Disney Castle, and once again this boss teases an important character in an upcoming game. Lingering Will is by far the most difficult boss in Kingdom Hearts 2, you can get harshly punished within seconds and this living armor has a strikingly huge variety of moves that must be memorized to some degree. You can cheese this boss using Fenrir, but I think you should keep your hands clean, this is a great boss that will feel incredibly rewarding to eventually best in combat, you can do it.
One more little note, unlike KH1, getting the Ultima Weapon in KH2 doesn't feel even half as painful, and I recommend trying to get it on your first playthrough. This does necessitate that you enter the Cavern of Remembrance, as you need at least 1 of every synthesis material to get the recipe, but it is that difficult, and it is worth it. Keep a guide handy for this task.
To cap off this segment, the final boss of Kingdom Hearts 2's main story is a multi-phase playable power fantasy where you're using reaction commands to perform crazy stunts and feats, leaping thousands of feet, cutting through buildings, just to fight One Guy. This entire segment just rules, and while some phases are kind of lame (the phase where you just hit Xemnas on his throne lasts 2 seconds), it is immediately made up for with all other fantastical phases, ending in Final Xemnas, where his suit takes a new silver form, and the backdrop seems ethereal. Sora and Riku take him on in a fight with a positively dramatic score. I cannot really easily use words to describe how this boss fight makes me feel, it just rules from start to finish, and it all ends to an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the series.
That is, until you (may have) unlocked the secret ending, titled "Birth by Sleep", showing a mysterious old man with a black knight beside him, facing off against three keyblade-wielding heroes. What's that, one of them looks like the Lingering Will! That is incredibly intriguing. This is one of my favorite game cinematics... ever. Fate of the Unknown plays throughout it, and the sheer amount of spectacle with this fight, a fight that seems so grand in scale, syncs really well with the music. This introduces many questions, who are these people? Why is (Roxas) there? Why are there so many keyblades? Why is Kingdom Hearts in this random desert? All of this will be answered by an upcoming title, many incorrectly believing to be Kingdom Hearts 3, but the title eventually presents itself as Birth by Sleep. This would take 4-5 more years to come out, but this immediately generated hype as soon as it was viewed. And how couldn't it? It's the coolest thing that people have ever seen!
I will review BBS at a later date, but this is all to say, if you're reading all of this and haven't played Kingdom Hearts 2, please do! It's so brilliant, and there are few games like it.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts 2 was via the 1.5/2.5 collection released on PC via EGS. I recommend that a new player plays the game using a PC or an 8th or 9th generation console (not including the Switch) for the best experience. Unfortunately, this is also one of the games in this collection that is, still to this day, somewhat broken on PC as it has persistent crashes and random little issues that may hinder play, but it is easy to fix using online patches such as Kingdom Hearts Re:Freshed or Re:Fined. I also used a mod to revert all enemy colors to their original color scheme from the non-Final Mix versions.
I played on the Critical difficulty, and this is the one time I recommend anyone, even new players, to do the same. The abilities and general progression of Critical can make the game feel better early on, and the challenge is most fun with stakes. If the difficulty is too much, or you're concerned that you can't do it, there is no shame in playing Beginner or Normal.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is the platonic ideal of a character-action RPG, with a sharp emphasis of a power fantasy and combat opportunities available to you in a pinch, and a speed that always feels just right. I still hold that, to this day, there has never been an action-focused RPG (not including fromsoft titles) that feels nearly as good as Kingdom Hearts 2 does at any moment.
In this game you start in Twilight Town as... Who the hell is Roxas? Did I miss something? Well, no, we didn't, and this confusing introduction is deliberate, and in my opinion, done very well. You start off as Roxas, enjoying his summer break, and learning that something in his typical life just seems off, eventually culminating into the player being reintroduced back into the body and control of Sora. Within this introduction, we are re-taught mechanics from the first game, such as locking on and jumping, and new ones, like having the Information tab that lets the player know of their objective, and most notably Reaction Commands, in which you press the button corresponding to the top of the command list in green, in order to interact with something. In the world, this is including things like chests, context sensitive locations, and more, while in combat these are time sensitive skills that are often, in some way, required to succeed in combat. While this may make the game seem like it is a "Press Triangle to Win" game, it does properly feel like you are given more options and opportunities to play with within combat, it works very well.
Much like Kingdom Hearts 1, you are given the option to choose a weapon within the Dive to the Heart, and a little bit prior to that. The first one simply gives you a permanent +1 stat to Strength, Magic or Defense, and this is up to the player's choice, but I personally like Strength here. As for the dive to the heart, unlike 1, you don't have to "discard" a weapon. Once again, I like the shield here the most, but magic is also a great option. This latter option changes the order in which you unlock abilities, and I personally like having access to defensive abilities earlier.
This game generally revolves around Sora, Donald and Goofy traversing a variety of worlds from Disney properties, but instead of one main visit to each world, you instead have two shorter visits to each disney world, more visits for other worlds. When visiting the world, instead of the same gummi mission in each instance of travel, you instead have the world "locked" by a gummi mission that necessitates completion before unlocking it, being able to warp freely to that world. Gummi missions in this game are also much more interesting as they have more going for it, there's more threats as well as some missions that have "bosses" that must be taken care of. Regardless, in all cases the game improves on gummi ship navigation by solely not forcing you to make every trip (in the early game) a mission.
Worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 are much easier to traverse, given that you now move quite a bit faster and have more movement options. While many may point out that the worlds are a downgrade due to it being less reliant on exploration or platforming, I think that this also means that worlds in KH2 facilitate combat better, and are paced nicely with the rest of the game. As for the visits being split into two, this typically has the first visit be more Disney oriented, and the second visit more focused on main Kingdom Hearts enemies, with the exception of Agrabah; it is flipped. This works really nicely in my opinion, it allows the main villains of Kingdom Hearts 2 to more properly take a front seat when they are needed there, it feels like the main villains are more involved throughout 2 than they would have been before. Beyond that, worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 also do not have the same variance in quality as 1, where I can't say there is any (required) world that I genuinely dislike as opposed to 1's Agrabah and Atlantica.
But enough about worlds, how does the gameplay stack up? It's completely stacked, that's for sure. There is much more of a variety of abilities that can really change the way you can fight, with combo initiators, finishers, extenders, and all of that yummy juicy stuff, it all flows really well. Unlike in 1, unlockable keyblades are no longer simple stat sticks of damage, MP, length and an invisible crit chance. In this game, they all have abilities that can make your combat much nicer. This can be as simple as extending your ground or air combo by 1 step, or as significant as increasing your damage depending on how many hits you can get in. Last, but certainly not least, KH2 introduces drive forms, and a drive gauge that allows you to expend drive points (and temporarily disables a combat partner or two) to transform into a form that makes you incredibly powerful for a short time. Valor form is a melee-focused form that can have you stick your enemies into long combos, Wisdom form prioritizes magic, and turns your keyblade into a little magical machine gun when you attack, and changes the properties of your magic spells. Master form does a little bit of both, and Final form does a lot of both. Final mix also introduces Limit form, which changes your magic into the KH1 limit abilities such as Ars Arcanum or Sonic Blade. In all forms except Wisdom and Limit form, you can equip another keyblade, with all of its stats and ability fully intact! The punishment for using these forms too much is Anti-Form, in which Sora transforms into a heartless-like being and can dish out incredibly long combos, but is weaker and can't perform many defensive actions. Aside from Anti-Form, all of these forms have XP to gain within them, and each level can give you an upgrade to Growth abilities, such as High Jump, Dodge Roll, or Glide. There is no shortage of things you can do with all of these things at your disposal.
Magic has changed quite a bit, too. Instead of having individual magic points, each spell using 1-2 points, you have an MP bar with a double-triple digit number, each spell costing 5-20(?) per cast. The exception is Cure, which will always use rest of the MP bar. When MP is emptied, it goes into "MP Recharge" where it slowly fills back up to full. Some spells like Fire also have an AOE spinning effect, and some spells such as Aero, Stop and Gravity are replaced by Magnet and the incredibly powerful Reflect. The change here is intended to punish players for using Cure too much, and it works, although spells like Reflect I feel are a little too cheap, as it is genuinely that powerful of a tool. I do think that this change overall is very nice.
The story in KH2, without shedding much detail, is awesome! A handful of new lore details are (re-)introduced and it eventually turns into an epic of gargantuan proportions, involving Sora traversing worlds to stop what is possibly his greatest foes yet.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of my favorite games ever made. It has everything I could have ever asked for in a sequel, and it does so much within its gameplay time, with lots of amazing post-game content to spare (in FM). I recommend anyone pick up 1.5/2.5 remix to play this game. Final mix is a huge step up in quality, the original game would be a 9/10 for simply not being FM.
Final Mix major differences:
This version of the game, previously locked to Japan, adds 14+ high quality bosses, an entirely new post-game area to explore, a puzzle system where you collect pieces around the worlds, a couple progression changes, the Critical difficulty mode, and new enemies! This is a ton of bonus content, most of which is the best of this game. There are quite a few new cutscenes, some of which may make no sense without further context in later games, but this is worth it. As stated prior, like KH1FM, this game also adds color palette swaps that I am not generally fond of, and cannot be reverted in the console versions unfortunately. Regardless, this is unmistakeably the definitive version of the game.
Story spoilers below!
One of the most interesting things in Kingdom Hearts 2 is the expansion of Nobodies as a concept. They were present in CoM (and 1FM), but they were not fully explored, as they were described as simply "not belonging to light or darkness" as opposed to being a fleshed out part of the universe, and instead are the bodies that are left behind by the heart. When the heart is removed from a body, it creates a Heartless, and leaves behind a Nobody. This also explains who the hell Roxas is, as when Sora turned the keyblade on himself, he turned into a heartless and this action also created Roxas and Namine with Kairi's freed heart.
With that, Organization XIII, a faction of high class nobodies lead by Xemnas, the nobody of Ansem, is my favorite villain faction in the franchise. Portraying a powerful group of emotionless people with the goal of recreating a Kingdom Hearts by relying on Sora to free multitudes of hearts from Emblem (manufactured) Heartless. I think that Kingdom Hearts 2 in turn feels more "epic" when facing off against these incredibly powerful foes across the game. Their presence in CoM is also great, and it explains why there aren't, well, 13 of them in 2's main quest. These boss fights against characters like Demyx, Xaldin, Xigbar, and most especially Xemnas, are some of the coolest boss fights ever, with the booming presence of Yoko Shimomura's soundtrack in each fight.
While I think I miss having the original Hollow Bastion from KH1, I love the original worlds in this game. Twilight town feels appropriately comfortable, and the stage setting using Roxas and his friends, while mysterious, makes it all feel worth playing. Hollow Bastion (or more accurately, Radiant Garden) is a huge sprawl of a mountainous town with a less warm color scheme to boot than Twilight Town. Both of these worlds are the equivalent of KH1's Traverse Town, in which you visit them often for new story elements and to discover more about the shady Organization that seems to be tugging on every string to their plan. Lastly, my favorite world in the franchise, The World that Never Was, is the final world of Kingdom Hearts 2. It's absolutely beautiful, you have a dark, almost cyberpunk-aesthetic city, teeming with heartless, with an eye-piercing castle in the horizon, a castle for Nobodies, the home of Organization XIII. The geometry of the castle representing a clan of nothingness simply makes no sense compared to the imposing, but structured city. One may complain that this location seems like a boss gauntlet, or where they really shove most of the plot of the game in the last 10% of the main quest, but I just absolutely love this setting, and having the game culminate here just makes absolute sense.
The game ends with you taking on the rest of the standing Organization XIII, but you still have business to settle with a kid, much like you, who just wanted his life back, as it now had meaning to him. Prior to reaching the castle, you face off against Roxas in a dive to the heart, a cutscene in the original turned into a full-fledged boss fight in Final Mix. While this fight takes place, Roxas' theme, The Other Promise, pulls at your heartstrings, this fight is sort of tragic in a way. The fight ends with Roxas not perishing, but accepting that Sora deserves his life too. This is arguably a scene that is just as iconic as the final fight vs. Xemnas, but one with great personal stakes as opposed to a potentially universe-ending event. This is a scene that, like Sora freeing his and Kairi's heart in the first game, becomes more and more important as the franchise goes on, and it absolutely deserves it.
Now, if you're playing the original version, you're left with one fairly simple superboss with Sephiroth, who I feel is much easier than in the first game, albeit much cooler. However, if you're playing Final Mix, you're treated with 14 superbosses and a whole new post-game area, found near the castle of Hollow Bastion, perhaps contained within it, is the Cave of Remembrance. You can fight significantly easier versions of a few of these superbosses by challenging the "Absent Silhouettes" you may find around a few worlds, but these are not the real deal. The Cavern of Remembrance can be quite challenging, you are expected to have all of your growth abilities leveled up to the maximum in order to traverse it, and the cave has a surfeit of high level enemies that can chop you up if you're not careful. At the end of this gauntlet is a terminal that can be activated to reveal all 13 members of Organization XIII in data, assumed to be when they were at their strongest. Some fights are more challenging than others, but none of them are a slouch, you have to be at your A-game to push yourself to victory. At last, you can find this game's ultimate challenge at Disney Castle, and once again this boss teases an important character in an upcoming game. Lingering Will is by far the most difficult boss in Kingdom Hearts 2, you can get harshly punished within seconds and this living armor has a strikingly huge variety of moves that must be memorized to some degree. You can cheese this boss using Fenrir, but I think you should keep your hands clean, this is a great boss that will feel incredibly rewarding to eventually best in combat, you can do it.
One more little note, unlike KH1, getting the Ultima Weapon in KH2 doesn't feel even half as painful, and I recommend trying to get it on your first playthrough. This does necessitate that you enter the Cavern of Remembrance, as you need at least 1 of every synthesis material to get the recipe, but it is that difficult, and it is worth it. Keep a guide handy for this task.
To cap off this segment, the final boss of Kingdom Hearts 2's main story is a multi-phase playable power fantasy where you're using reaction commands to perform crazy stunts and feats, leaping thousands of feet, cutting through buildings, just to fight One Guy. This entire segment just rules, and while some phases are kind of lame (the phase where you just hit Xemnas on his throne lasts 2 seconds), it is immediately made up for with all other fantastical phases, ending in Final Xemnas, where his suit takes a new silver form, and the backdrop seems ethereal. Sora and Riku take him on in a fight with a positively dramatic score. I cannot really easily use words to describe how this boss fight makes me feel, it just rules from start to finish, and it all ends to an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the series.
That is, until you (may have) unlocked the secret ending, titled "Birth by Sleep", showing a mysterious old man with a black knight beside him, facing off against three keyblade-wielding heroes. What's that, one of them looks like the Lingering Will! That is incredibly intriguing. This is one of my favorite game cinematics... ever. Fate of the Unknown plays throughout it, and the sheer amount of spectacle with this fight, a fight that seems so grand in scale, syncs really well with the music. This introduces many questions, who are these people? Why is (Roxas) there? Why are there so many keyblades? Why is Kingdom Hearts in this random desert? All of this will be answered by an upcoming title, many incorrectly believing to be Kingdom Hearts 3, but the title eventually presents itself as Birth by Sleep. This would take 4-5 more years to come out, but this immediately generated hype as soon as it was viewed. And how couldn't it? It's the coolest thing that people have ever seen!
I will review BBS at a later date, but this is all to say, if you're reading all of this and haven't played Kingdom Hearts 2, please do! It's so brilliant, and there are few games like it.
the first hour is ass (derogatory)
the rest is ass (complimentary [i like ass])
the rest is ass (complimentary [i like ass])
piece of fucking shit lol
If i was there id put a bullet in the back of the Rat Kings head myself
gonna brag on here so excuse my smugness
my brother was stuck on one of the final bosses of this game, i think it was the dude right before the redhead, and ofc my brother being godzilla he got angry and screamed alot (hes broken 2 discs before) so when he took a break i was thinking "u know what ill try". and yes i beat that son of a bitch, the very first time i played a kingdom hearts game was this moment. as you can tell im pretty epic 😎
my brother was stuck on one of the final bosses of this game, i think it was the dude right before the redhead, and ofc my brother being godzilla he got angry and screamed alot (hes broken 2 discs before) so when he took a break i was thinking "u know what ill try". and yes i beat that son of a bitch, the very first time i played a kingdom hearts game was this moment. as you can tell im pretty epic 😎
Holy shit is roxas such a boring fucker to play as in this game. But after that steaming pile of shit of a prologue ends, peak begins. I still fucking hate disney properties tho
This review contains spoilers
Assassin's Creed. God of War. Uncharted. What do these have in common? They all have sequels, that no matter how beloved or nostalgic the original, are such a substantial improvement on their predecessor that they allowed the franchises to continue unfettered. Kingdom Hearts 2. I had quite a good impression of KH1. It was obviously dated for its time and held back by the technical limitations of the hardware, but it still captured the magic of both the Disney and FF universes that it was drawing from. Kingdom Hearts 2, is just better, in every single way. It has more narrative depth, which can often be confusing but allows for enough intrigue that the player will want to figure it out. The introduction of Drive Forms, and the redesign of other mechanics make it an actual blast to play. The worlds that we explore, both the new and the returning, are excellently designed, and the boss fights are so incredible and bombastic that its truly a cinematic treat every time you enter a fight. At no point did this game feel like a chore, maybe a challenge, but never a chore. Just a stellar gaming experience from beginning to end. And while the first game put me on to the franchise, this is the one that has made me a fan.
a scattered dream that's like a far off memory, a far off memory that's like a scattered dream!!@!@#
This was one of my favorite games during my childhood. I loved the format of traveling to Disney worlds and meeting all the characters. The opening song was one of the first songs on my mp3 player. I recently played it this year with my girlfriend and it was still very enjoyable to go through.