Kingdom Hearts II is a game I've been really eager to try out, its phenomenal reception and just the constant chatter surrounding the game really sells it. It's kinda funny how you have to go through two games, one pretty average and the other bad to get to this point and to some it's quite literally impossible to go back to the first game, me included. And that's simply a testament on how much they improved the formula this time around, In reality, Kingdom Hearts II feels and plays like Kingdom Hearts on crack.
Everything in this game is like trifold what it was in the first one, so much more content, more combat and movement abilities, more worlds to go through and a generally more cohesive and better story overall, it's really just crazy playing this and then going back and realizing how much the scale of things have changed and how much of it was augmented literally in the same generation of consoles, and this all makes for a pretty timeless game that has aged stupidly well and that is a marvel to play nowadays, with it being really charming, polished and fun as hell.
The updated combat makes up for a large learning curve of combos and different builds you can make for pretty much any occasion, something neat is that even the most seemingly bad abilities have a use and a certain level of potential to it, making them all very important overall and crucial for practically reaping through the game with the newly added Forms system that inclines you to approach combat differently as activating them usually restricts you from using certain other abilities or having a focus on things like Magic or Limits, and if you use these more than enough you eventually get Growth abilities that'll carry the enhanced high-jump or dodges to Sora's usual gameplay, kind of pushing you to think about using them more often than not.
Being able to properly tweak the tactics of your team in a hierarchy of using certain attacks more often, every now and then and less often is neat too, makes the party members feel a whole lot more useful than they ever did in past entries, although overall I wish giving them AP was way more worth it, because I'm pretty sure everyone just stacked up like 100 AP for Sora and then left Goofy and Donald in the 30's, can't say I didn't, but it's pretty much due because of the range of abilities you can actually have with Sora meanwhile the other party members are always stuck with the same basic ones.
Moving onto the worlds themselves, this time around they have pretty much cherry picked the most interesting/fun worlds to play from KH1 and brought them back, like Halloween Town and Olympus Coliseum and added a plethora of new ones, with the addition of smaller bite-sized worlds that are usually more of a plot thing than compared to the rest of the worlds. That and the addition of some particularly weird ones like Port Royal (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Space Paranoids (Tron) being the first worlds based off of live-action Disney properties, but I'll take them any day over Deep Jungle, Monstro or Atlantica. Needless to say the preexisting worlds have gotten significant upgrades when it comes to actual value in cutscenes, characters or locations from these classics.
Now, it's about time I start complaining about certain things, these are in no way completely experience-tarnishing and didn't personally bother me when I played the game but are things that I recognize that could have been done better for an ultimately perfect experience. So, with Kingdom Hearts II I've always felt that this game rides off of being better than KH1 a little bit too much, almost to the point where they forgot to be better AND expand further.
Take for example the levels in this game, KH1 had a really bad case of most levels' design being really obtuse, having a lot of obstacle courses when the mobility wasn't the best and having every level be a block with adjacent blocks around it that would contain chests and other collectibles that you would have to go out of your way of getting... Kingdom Hearts II is the complete polar opposite of that.
In Kingdom Hearts II, every level/world is comprised of hallways. Every single level you can go to you can go from point A to point B without any disturbance, not even anything that would require any sort of the new mobility the game likes to show off so much, and that is honestly so disheartening, and really shifts the focus of the game from making you look around and explore the worlds to just getting to the end of the hallway to fight a boss and then nothing else, by then you've most likely already collected all chests in the area and there is little left to see, and it's truly a shame because exploring and going around in this would've been so much fun especially considering the Forms and the Growth abilities. Ironically enough, this is the first Kingdom Hearts game with a minimap that you don't really even need for exploring, as it is a menial task in this game.
Another thing that I kinda wish they'd done better was the story and the beats of it, in KH1 I understood why the original Kingdom Hearts story wasn't really the spotlight as it still was a risky move in case the game didn't sell all that well, but in here... You have a whole Chain of Memories behind you, that game was pretty much comprised of 70% original Kingdom Hearts story stuff, then you have the chance to expand upon the new characters and plot points that were already pretty much secluded to a pretty bad game, to just fall into the same formula for the second entry. I clocked in around 33 hours of playtime, and between the story taking its sweet little time drip feeding you actual original story content, having to play all of the worlds and then do it AGAIN after the first big lore dump(marking the halfway point of the game) is just insane, if the game wasn't as fun as it is this would be horrible. Then the last 5 hours is like the thing that they kept on talking about over and over during the whole game and it just doesn't feel as satisfactory as it being a constant through the game, kinda just feels like they kept everything until the end so that the final act would feel satisfactory, but to me it felt rather cheap.
Overall, Kingdom Hearts II is an amazing game with pretty good things going for it, but it's literally gracing perfection and it saddens me that this could be refined ever so slightly to make it that. But as it stands, it's a good game, and would definitely recommend. Just make sure you play on something more than Normal if you're a competent enough player, a few levels over and you're already launching nukes at the poor Heartless.
Everything in this game is like trifold what it was in the first one, so much more content, more combat and movement abilities, more worlds to go through and a generally more cohesive and better story overall, it's really just crazy playing this and then going back and realizing how much the scale of things have changed and how much of it was augmented literally in the same generation of consoles, and this all makes for a pretty timeless game that has aged stupidly well and that is a marvel to play nowadays, with it being really charming, polished and fun as hell.
The updated combat makes up for a large learning curve of combos and different builds you can make for pretty much any occasion, something neat is that even the most seemingly bad abilities have a use and a certain level of potential to it, making them all very important overall and crucial for practically reaping through the game with the newly added Forms system that inclines you to approach combat differently as activating them usually restricts you from using certain other abilities or having a focus on things like Magic or Limits, and if you use these more than enough you eventually get Growth abilities that'll carry the enhanced high-jump or dodges to Sora's usual gameplay, kind of pushing you to think about using them more often than not.
Being able to properly tweak the tactics of your team in a hierarchy of using certain attacks more often, every now and then and less often is neat too, makes the party members feel a whole lot more useful than they ever did in past entries, although overall I wish giving them AP was way more worth it, because I'm pretty sure everyone just stacked up like 100 AP for Sora and then left Goofy and Donald in the 30's, can't say I didn't, but it's pretty much due because of the range of abilities you can actually have with Sora meanwhile the other party members are always stuck with the same basic ones.
Moving onto the worlds themselves, this time around they have pretty much cherry picked the most interesting/fun worlds to play from KH1 and brought them back, like Halloween Town and Olympus Coliseum and added a plethora of new ones, with the addition of smaller bite-sized worlds that are usually more of a plot thing than compared to the rest of the worlds. That and the addition of some particularly weird ones like Port Royal (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Space Paranoids (Tron) being the first worlds based off of live-action Disney properties, but I'll take them any day over Deep Jungle, Monstro or Atlantica. Needless to say the preexisting worlds have gotten significant upgrades when it comes to actual value in cutscenes, characters or locations from these classics.
Now, it's about time I start complaining about certain things, these are in no way completely experience-tarnishing and didn't personally bother me when I played the game but are things that I recognize that could have been done better for an ultimately perfect experience. So, with Kingdom Hearts II I've always felt that this game rides off of being better than KH1 a little bit too much, almost to the point where they forgot to be better AND expand further.
Take for example the levels in this game, KH1 had a really bad case of most levels' design being really obtuse, having a lot of obstacle courses when the mobility wasn't the best and having every level be a block with adjacent blocks around it that would contain chests and other collectibles that you would have to go out of your way of getting... Kingdom Hearts II is the complete polar opposite of that.
In Kingdom Hearts II, every level/world is comprised of hallways. Every single level you can go to you can go from point A to point B without any disturbance, not even anything that would require any sort of the new mobility the game likes to show off so much, and that is honestly so disheartening, and really shifts the focus of the game from making you look around and explore the worlds to just getting to the end of the hallway to fight a boss and then nothing else, by then you've most likely already collected all chests in the area and there is little left to see, and it's truly a shame because exploring and going around in this would've been so much fun especially considering the Forms and the Growth abilities. Ironically enough, this is the first Kingdom Hearts game with a minimap that you don't really even need for exploring, as it is a menial task in this game.
Another thing that I kinda wish they'd done better was the story and the beats of it, in KH1 I understood why the original Kingdom Hearts story wasn't really the spotlight as it still was a risky move in case the game didn't sell all that well, but in here... You have a whole Chain of Memories behind you, that game was pretty much comprised of 70% original Kingdom Hearts story stuff, then you have the chance to expand upon the new characters and plot points that were already pretty much secluded to a pretty bad game, to just fall into the same formula for the second entry. I clocked in around 33 hours of playtime, and between the story taking its sweet little time drip feeding you actual original story content, having to play all of the worlds and then do it AGAIN after the first big lore dump
Overall, Kingdom Hearts II is an amazing game with pretty good things going for it, but it's literally gracing perfection and it saddens me that this could be refined ever so slightly to make it that. But as it stands, it's a good game, and would definitely recommend. Just make sure you play on something more than Normal if you're a competent enough player, a few levels over and you're already launching nukes at the poor Heartless.