Kinda forgot to review this game because I've been mostly playing it on the side and also wanted to review it once I beat Lingering Will but then I somehow forgot to save the game after finishing the Mushroom XIII and beating Sephiroth and haven't booted it up again since so i guess I should get to that now.
Reviewing Kingdom Hearts II after playing it feels strange because I watched a playthrough of this game in I think 2017 and my opinion hasn't changed much since. Despite only having watched playthroughs of (now most of) the Kingdom Hearts series, I love it enough that I purchased the all in one bundle (which isn't all in one) so my gf could play it and I could rewatch it with a new perspective essentially.
Among this series I love, Kingdom Hearts II stands out not just because people generally agree that it has the best story, people also generally agree that it has the best gameplay.
And after playing it myself I certainly agree with the last point! My only real complaint is that the difficulty curve is kinda fucked. I was playing on Critical and still I barely struggled for most of the main story (with Roxas, Demyx, and Xaldin as three big exceptions) and then as soon as you start doing postgame stuff the difficulty shoots up exponentially. i wish there was more content that was between Roxas and Sephiroth, and even more content between Sephiroth and the Data Organization battles.
Other than that, the battle system is really great, its fusion of action and menu-based combat works perfectly and I love the build variety. It is wild to me that Square Enix keeps failing to reinvent the wheel when it comes to action rpg combat when they already nailed it in 2005.
I feel like I should also say something about the story but I'm not sure I have much to say. It's a good story despite (or maybe because of) being 90% filler, I wish it didn't hate women so much, and its neither as simple nor as complex as some people claim it is.
Reviewing Kingdom Hearts II after playing it feels strange because I watched a playthrough of this game in I think 2017 and my opinion hasn't changed much since. Despite only having watched playthroughs of (now most of) the Kingdom Hearts series, I love it enough that I purchased the all in one bundle (which isn't all in one) so my gf could play it and I could rewatch it with a new perspective essentially.
Among this series I love, Kingdom Hearts II stands out not just because people generally agree that it has the best story, people also generally agree that it has the best gameplay.
And after playing it myself I certainly agree with the last point! My only real complaint is that the difficulty curve is kinda fucked. I was playing on Critical and still I barely struggled for most of the main story (with Roxas, Demyx, and Xaldin as three big exceptions) and then as soon as you start doing postgame stuff the difficulty shoots up exponentially. i wish there was more content that was between Roxas and Sephiroth, and even more content between Sephiroth and the Data Organization battles.
Other than that, the battle system is really great, its fusion of action and menu-based combat works perfectly and I love the build variety. It is wild to me that Square Enix keeps failing to reinvent the wheel when it comes to action rpg combat when they already nailed it in 2005.
I feel like I should also say something about the story but I'm not sure I have much to say. It's a good story despite (or maybe because of) being 90% filler, I wish it didn't hate women so much, and its neither as simple nor as complex as some people claim it is.