Kingdom Hearts II

"Disney Fantasy"

For some reason or another, I was never able to get into the first Kingdom Hearts game, despite the heap of praise. I don't remember the game much. In fact, all I really remember is that it was pretty cool to see little kid versions of Tidus and Wakka from Final Fantasy X, but that's about it. When the sequel was released, I remember being skeptical at trying it out at first, but in the end I gave Kingdom Hearts II a try. While it definitely didn't blow my mind, Kingdom Hearts II is a very solid action RPG and one of the best looking games on the PlayStation 2.

When I was younger, I usually made fun of the concept of turn-based battle systems and I often wondered why Square Enix made their Final Fantasy games with this system. Of course, as I grew older, I realized that turn-based battles can provide for some brilliant gameplay, and in the end, Square Enix has more or less ruined Final Fantasy for me when they omitted the turn-based battles in Final Fantasy XII in favor of a more MMORPG combat approach. Kingdom Hearts II appealed to me mostly because of its real-time hack-and-slash gameplay, and I do have to say that I had mixed feelings about the combat.

There are countless enemies, called Heartless, that take various forms and will try to end Sora's (the main protagonist) quest. Basically, you mostly just mash on a single button and tear through the legions of enemies and there really isn't much skill involved. You can also choose to use magic or use a tag-team attack with whoever is in your party by a menu reminiscent of traditional RPGs, but I found nearly all of the options from this menu more or less absolutely useless.

If you have been living under a rock for the last few years, let me enlighten you about the concept of the Kingdom Hearts games. Square Enix and Disney were sitting around one day, probably doing some sort of drug, and then one of them jumped up and said, “Hey! Let's make a video game where Disney characters appear alongside Final Fantasy characters and the main characters are voiced by the freaky kid from The Sixth Sense and Jesse McCartney!” This means that your party members are, for most of the game, Donald Duck and Goofy. Goofy is more of a melee kind of guy while Donald sticks to using magic. They are mostly useless and while you can program them to do things certain ways, I am curious as to why Square Enix didn't just make them playable characters. That would have made for some awesome co-op wouldn't it?

Just like probably every single RPG ever created, you grow stronger by leveling up, thus increasing your stats. You can also equip your party with various weapons and other attributes, but the menu system is scathingly confusing. Honestly, I only had a quarter of the game left before I figured out how to switch weapons, so that should probably tell you that it isn't even necessary to collect any other weapons because they really don't do much to help you during your quest.

What definitely will help you during your adventure is a gameplay mechanic called the Drive Gauge. You fill this gauge up by kicking ass and then afterwards you can activate it. Drive Forms allow you to do various things like shooting beams out of your weapon (Sora carries around large keys called “key blades”) or basically just becoming overpowered. The Drive Gauge is also used to summon Disney characters to help you, but you won't find yourself summoning people very much.

I was surprised to find that Kingdom Hearts II was an extremely easy game. I figured that it would provide a hefty challenge, but except for a few boss fights here and there, the game was actually a smooth ride. Whenever you get to a save point, your health is restored as is your magic power. Plus, later in the game, after you die, you take control of Mickey Mouse and you are given another chance at life by defeating whoever killed you using the extremely powerful King Mickey.

For the first three hours or so of the game, you are forced to do some pretty mundane things as Roxas. After you finally get control of Sora and the real game starts, you are introduced to some basic world traveling concepts.

You travel from Disney-themed world to Disney-themed world in a ship called the Gummi Ship. It functions like a rail-shooter mini-game. You basically just kill all of the bad guys you see until you get to the end and then you unlock some worlds. This means that the game isn't as linear as you would expect since there are some worlds that you can skip entirely. The Gummi Ship can be upgraded with various parts found throughout the Kingdom Hearts universe.

Before I started playing this game, I became as educated as humanly possible on the Kingdom Hearts plotline as to avoid as much confusion as possible. I completely understand the first game and the GBA mid-sequel, but I couldn't make heads or tails of Kingdom Hearts II. Everything is just so unbearably confusing and even after taking a step back and reading multiple plot descriptions on the Internet, I still have no idea what the hell was going on. Still, there are some dramatic moments that you can appreciate and there is plenty of Disney/Final Fantasy goodness to go around. Sometimes the game literally had me in awe during some moments and I have a feeling some of the sequences found in this game are some that I will never forget. Considering how many games I've played in my lifetime that is saying something.

Now onto some more high points, the graphics were brilliant. Environments were detailed and they all looked nice, plus the game manages to fit a load of enemies on the screen at once with virtually no lagging. I didn't find one single glitch during my time with the game and all of the Disney characters and most of the Final Fantasy characters are represented nicely. I say “most” of the Final Fantasy characters because Cloud looked a little too bulky for my tastes, but besides that the characters models were very impressive.

Jesse McCartney plays the voice of Roxas. That statement alone may turn some gamers off because, I mean, it's Jesse McfreakingCartney. All in all though he doesn't do too badly with presenting the character of Roxas and I was a little surprised that his acting skills were above average. Haley Joel Osment reprises his role as Sora and while his voice may be a little too deep for the character nowadays, he still does a fantastic job. On top of that, brilliant actors and actresses like Zach Braff (Scrubs), Brittany Snow (Hairspray), Christopher Lee (Star Wars), and James Woods (Shark) really help make the audio presentation the greatest it will probably be in any video game ever. The soundtrack, while definitely not as impressive as the voice cast, still gets the job done and is very easy on the ears.

If you are looking for a solid RPG that can last you anywhere from thirty to sixty hours, look no further than Kingdom Hearts II. While this is all fine and good, after you finally complete the game, you will be disappointed to learn that you cannot start a New Game+, which kind of takes the replayability down a few notches. There are some side quests for you to do, but there is very little focus on them so, unless you are an RPG nut who just HAS to have 100%, you probably won't touch Kingdom Hearts II again after you've been through it once already.

Kingdom Hearts II really took me by surprise for a number of reasons. The amazing graphics and the brilliant voice cast wasn't much of a surprise since that's what Square Enix is known for, but the badly written and confusing story coupled with some somewhat boring gameplay mechanics are what surprised me. I know there are multiple games slated to be released in the Kingdom Hearts series coming up, but if Square Enix ever decides to make a true sequel (which they probably will), I hope they decide to include a more robust combat system to keep boredom from setting in and I hope they spend more time crafting the story because, if they tried, they could create the most memorable video game narrative of all time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/08

Game Release: Kingdom Hearts II (US, 03/28/06)