Kingdom Hearts II is an Action RPG game developed by Square Enix and published by Square Enix USA in 2006 for the Playstation 2.

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Overall 9.6    Graphics 9    Sound 9    Addictive 8.5    Story 8    Depth 9    Difficulty 6


KH2 Review   TheFadedWarrior
Hey again! I'm back with yet another review, this time on the game Kingdom Hearts 2, made by Square Enix and Buena Vista Games for the Sony Playstation 2. Kingdom Hearts 2 is the 3rd installment in the series, and the 2nd installment in the Dark Seeker Saga (the main series). You play as a 15-year-old boy named Sora who is chosen to wield a blade in the shape of a key, known as the Keyblade. He fights a massive variety of enemies with this blade. I'm not sure if Kingdom Hearts 2 would be classified as an RPG or not, but whatever. Onto the review! I hope you enjoy!

Graphics - 9

The graphics of this game aren't meant to be realistic. They are rather meant to be like the Mario series, where the graphics are supposed to be sorta of "toony,"  but not look like a cartoon. The graphics of this game are amazing. The shading is done very well, the objects that are meant to be more realistic are textured very well, and the effects n' stuff are pretty awesome. All the animation is near-perfect, very smooth, and very realistic (such as when your character is running). Remember how I said the effects are pretty awesome? It has some of the coolest explosions, darkness swarms, etc. I have ever seen in a video game. We'll be starting off the review by giving the graphics a 9.

Sound - 10

The sound in this game is simply amazing. The sounds fit the event they match with very well, and sound pretty cool sometimes. The music, though... Oh dear sweet baked potatoes. The music tracks are amazing. I mean seriously, it's made by Square Enix, what do you expect? Some of the music is beautiful, and wants to make you cry. Some of the music is sad, and makes you feel a sorrow in yourself. Some of the music is epic, and makes you feel awesome. One of the enemy types in this game has some totally awesome organ music to fit all of its... everything. I wrote myself a list of best music tracks from the series (most of which comes from this exact installment). You can find the list here.

Gameplay - 8

Addictiveness - 10

The gameplay of this game is simply amazing. I mentioned earlier in this review, at the introduction, that you play as a 15-year-old named Sora, who wields a "Keyblade." In Kingdom Hearts II, your objective is to travel across multiple worlds and destroy enemies known as Heartless and Nobodies, with the help of Donald Duck and Goofy. There is a massive variety of Heartless, and a fair-sized variety of nobodies. Basically, you mash the X button on the controller when you're next to an enemy to defeat it. But here's a surprise - they attack back. Some of them are easy to defeat, some are hard. The Nobodies are normally tougher to defeat, though. They have more health, deal more damage, and have more annoying attacks and features (such as the Dancer nobody, who picks you up, dances around, and throws you the other direction, dealing large amounts of damage).

Then there are the bosses. They can definitely enhance gameplay and make it more entertaining. There are reaction/limit commands, which make you use special attacks if you press triangle quick enough. Each of the bosses have multiple ways of attacking, and each of the Nobody bosses have special attacks that deal more damage and stuff.

There are also many abilities you can equip that make you stronger. Speaking of abilities, there are Limits, Summons, and Drive Forms in the game. Limits are abilities that set off a volley of attacks to your enemy, costing all of your magic points (MP). Summons are self explanatory. You summon a character from a Disney movie, which helps you defeat your enemies. This costs part of your "Drive Gauge," which allows you to use summons and Drive Forms. Speaking of Drive Forms, this is what they are. Drive Forms are special modes you can put Sora on, which makes you more powerful. The forms are as follows:

Valor Form

The first form you receive is Valor Form. This Drive Form gives you a 2nd Keyblade of your choice, and makes your strength much higher, allowing you to deal much more damage. However, it prevents you from using any magic. The special ability you get from this is High Jump.

Wisdom Form

The second form you receive is Wisdom Form. Wisdom Form only gives you 1 Keyblade, but makes your magic much more powerful. Instead of hitting Heartless and Nobodies with your keyblade, you rather shoot laser beams at them. The special ability you get from Wisdom Form is Quick Run, which lets you dash away from your enemies.

Limit Form

This form is exclusive to Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix +, which is the Japan-exclusive release that has more features. Limit Form transforms you into how you were in the original Kingdom Hearts. This allows you to use limit commands, which are the special attacks you can use in the original Kingdom Hearts. The special ability you receive from this is Dodge Roll, which, yeah, rolls you away from your enemies. You are invulnerable when you use Dodge Roll.

Master Form

Master Form is the 3rd (or 4th, if you have KH2:FM+) form you receive. The other 2 are activated a different way. Master Form makes both your Magic stat and your Strength stat much higher, resulting in massive amounts of damage. Master Form is the form you want to use before you get the next form on the list. The special ability this gives you is Aerial Dodge, which is basically a double-jump used to get away from enemies in the air.

Final Form

Final Form is the ultimate form. It is unlocked randomly by using Master Form. When the rare chance that you unlock it comes, it will be added to your Drive Menu, so you can access it whenever you want. This makes both your strength and magic stats MUCH higher, and gives you some totally awesome combo finishes, dealing incredible amounts of damage. You unlock Glide from this, which lets you fly around, making a very fast way to travel and get to places out of reach.

Anti Form

Anti Form is the only form that you cannot access by will. It has a random chance of occurring (Well, maybe not so random. http://www.khwiki.net/Antiform#Mechanics) when you use a Drive Form. This removes your Keyblade, and turns you completely dark, so you deal minimal damage. However, you attack really fast, so you do deal a nice amount of damage. There is no special ability obtained by this form.

This game is really fun to play, even though it's pretty simple. I give the gameplay a great rating of 8.

Seeing as I gave the gameplay an 8, I'm probably gonna give the addictiveness rating either a 7, 8, or a 9, right? Wrong. Normally I would give it an 8, but depth and the story keep bringing me back for more. I could play this game hours and hours on end, without getting bored. I give the addictiveness another perfect 10.

Story - 10

The story of Kingdom Hearts II is extremely deep, and extremely awesome. Every game in the entire series/franchise is related to each of the others, though only Kingdom Hearts II, and III really matter if you didn't play the previous. One of the most interesting and important factors is that most worlds are based off of Disney movies (such as The Land of Dragons, which is based off of Mulan, or Agrabah, based off of Aladdin).

The game starts out where you play as a kid named Roxas. Basically, Roxas is a Nobody. He was never meant to be born. When Roxas discovers this, he joins an organization that controls all of the lower Nobodies, named Organization XIII. When Sora finds out about Organization XIII, he sets out on a long journey to defeat them once and for all (Organization XIII is dark). After you complete almost all of the worlds, there's 1,000 Heartless you have to defeat. After you defeat all of them, you discover that (spoiler alert) every Heartless defeated releases a heart (yeah, Heartless have hearts), which builds Kingdom Hearts. Once Kingdom Hearts is complete, all Nobodies turn into real beings (Somebodies). But Sora, for some odd reason, doesn't want the Nobodies to become real (sounds rude, doesn't it?), so he has to defeat less Heartless and defeat all of the Organization XIII members, all the way up to Xemnas, the leader.

That's only a fraction of the story. There are many cutscenes (at least 100) that explain the story. I give the story another incredible perfect 10.

Depth - 10

This game is really long. After you spend, what, 20 hours completing all of the worlds, you discover that the main "Hub world," Radiant Garden, is surrounded by darkness. After you defeat all of the 1000 Heartless, you have to go back to each of the worlds (excluding Atlantica, The Pridelands, and Disney Castle) to defeat most of the members of Organization XIII. Once you do that, you discover a pathway to The World That Never Was, which is the main Nobody world. There are also 2 optional worlds: The Pridelands and Atlantica. Also, there are a couple cups you can win in the Underdome (The Underworld's coliseum), all of them being 10 rounds of different enemies to defeat, except the Hades Paradox Cup, which is 50 rounds. I give the depth yet another incredible 10.

Difficulty - 8

This is the last part of the review before the "Overall" section. This game isn't really too hard. In fact, I might have even given it a 6 if it weren't for Organization XIII. Most of the bosses and enemies are pretty easy, though there are a few tough ones. However, there are some really tough bosses from Organization XIII.

The first one of Demyx, who forces you to do stuff like defeat 50 enemies within 30 seconds, or defeat 10 enemies within 10 seconds. Those can get pretty annoying to do, since if you fail you die.

Then, there's Xaldin, the Organization boss of Beast's Castle. This guy has a bunch of spears that he likes to beat the crap out of you with. He's pretty hard. Blah blah blah, all of the bosses are pretty tough.

I'd have to say the toughest of all, however, is Xigbar. First of all, this guy is nearly impossible to attack. He teleports all over the place, and the only chance you have to attack him is when he teleports away and reloads his gun. Second, he has a lot of health, so this combined with the first reason makes it so it takes a very long time to defeat him. Third, he shoots a bunch of lasers at you that deal large amounts of damage. And fourth, his special rage attack thingy... He shoots a crapton of homing lasers at you, dealing lots of damage each. If you fail to dodge even one, all of them keep attacking you, completely draining your HP. Yeah. He's friggin' impossible.There's an optional super-tough boss (there's 2 in the Japan version), who happens to be Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. He has an extremely long range, deals more damage than any other enemy in the game, is really fast so he's extremely hard to dodge, has more health than any other enemy in the game, and has an undodgeable attack that reduces your health to 1, and drains your magic so you can't use cure. Yup.Anyhow, the game's fairly easy, but the bosses can be really tough. For that, I give the difficulty an 8.Overall - 9.5Overall, Kingdom Hearts is truly an incredible game. It has incredible graphics, a completely amazing soundtrack, and it's extremely addictive. The story is amazing, too. The game is really long, so you have lots of bang for your buck, and the difficulty is fairly easy, but there are some challenges for the tougher gamers. Overall, I give this game an extremely impressive and unbiased 9.5.Thank you for reading my review! Feel free to gimme viz for criticize my review. Seeya!
  Graphics 9   Sound 10   Addictive 10   Story 10   Depth 10   Difficulty 8
      Review Rating: 5/5     Submitted: 01-01-14     Review Replies: 5


Disney cheesiness all around, but it's one of my favourite ever Playstation 2 games   OrdannonsX

My relationship with Kingdom Hearts II is a hectic one. I first bought this game from a game store when I was about 11 years old, thinking it would be a turn-based RPG, a la Final Fantasy. When I got home and slapped this baby in my old PS2 I noticed otherwise. And, quite honestly, I was pleasantly surprised. I got so hooked to Kingdom Hearts II that I couldn’t imagine any game library without at least a single Kingdom Hearts game. But then, one terrible day… I lend my Kingdom Hearts II to a friend. And he broke my copy. After beating him up, I looked forever for another copy in the stores, but really without any success. After some time, I thought I was forever apart from my Kingdom Hearts II. I gave up. Until, about a year later, I saw another copy of this game on the shelves! I couldn’t believe my own luck, and of course, instantly bought it with my savings. Now, I still play one of my childhood favourite PS2 games out there. Now that Kingdom Hearts III is coming up, I felt like I had to write a review about one of the series’ best.

 

The Graphics

Kingdom Hearts II has some wonderful candy for your eyes to nibble on. The world around you is drop-dead gorgeous, with lots of variety in style. You’ll visit the worlds of Disney franchises such as Aladdin, Hercules, The Lion King, even Pirates of the Caribbean, but also a couple of original, neatly designed levels. Like I said, each world you visit has their own unique style and design, making you really feel as if you’re in, let’s say, the Land of Dragons helping Mulan with… well, whatever her problem are. (spoilers!) Furthermore, the characters look great. Every licensed character such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, etc. look 100% true to their original designs (visit Timeless River for a nostalgia boost, btw), and the original characters are very creatively designed.

 

The Sound

Aside from some cheesy/bad voice work from the more minor characters, and some repetitive music input here and there, there is a lot to love about Kingdom Hearts II’s sound. This game has a giant soundtrack, with over 70 pieces of music to enjoy. There’s bound to be a couple of tracks you like. The voice work for the Disney characters is top-notch, most Disney characters (with a couple exceptions) have their voices spoken in by their official Disney voice actor, and it was Cloud’s first time at a English-spoken voice. Needless to say, it met my standards. It’s a 1000 times better than any Dragonball Z DUB could’ve been. Again, the sound isn’t perfect, some Disney voices who Disney or Square couldn’t find the original voice actor for have gotten terrible replacements, and the game only seems to have one ‘sad scene’ music track used in every scene where the characters talk about sadness or their own insecurity, but this is quickly overlooked when looking at the overall picture.

 

The Addictiveness

As a little kid, there wasn’t a single video game I put more hours in than in Kingdom Hearts II. This game easily goes in my top 5 for most played video games. And, mind you, it’s still pretty darn addictive for me. There’s quite a lot of stuff to do and find in this game (which I will talk about in the Depth paragraph) and the things to do come with great rewards, making most things a joy to complete. Apart from one thing. Square Enix made a major screw-up with the requirements to unlock the secret ending. This is the way it works: When you’re playing on Proud Mode (the hard difficulty), you automatically get to see the secret ending when you defeat the final boss. But when you’re playing on standard/normal difficulty, you need to beat the final boss, when you’ve done everything there is to do in the entire game. Basically, in normal mode, you need to complete the game a 100% to see the secret ending. Why did they do this in normal mode, and not in hard mode? It doesn’t make sense, this makes the normal difficulty look way more daunting than the hard difficulty, seeing as you don’t really need to complete the game in hard mode as in normal mode. The fact that you’re not really ‘encouraged’ to fully beat the game in hard mode, greatly diminishes the addictiveness for me.

 

The Story

This game’s story has more cheese in it than a Dutch cheese farm, but that’s not necessarily a bad  thing. The plot in Kingdom Hearts II does a good enough job of tying things up, leaving a desire for more at the end, and leaving a couple of holes at the start to be filled up by the game’s later prequels like 385/2 Days. The story’s main theme revolves around the power of friendship, and how strong a bond between friends can be. Don’t play this game with a sceptical view on life, and you’ll be charmed by the events. Even though you might be a bit confused at the start of the game, during the whole Roxas in Twilight Town saga (even if you played the first Kingdom Hearts) this will all come clear later in the game. It is during the latter prequels like Birth by Sleep and Coded where the plot become over-complicated.

 

The Depth

There is a lot to do in Kingdom Hearts II. There are a lot of mini-games to play, some make for great fun, and they’re all played in a different way which makes for a lot of variety in gameplay. Some worlds even make you play around with a skateboard which is actually great fun. You can perform sick tricks on it! Gnarly! These mini-games all reward you with a certain equippable item or weapon, giving you a reason for completing the challenges. If you completed the mini-game, there’s always an entry in you Journal which challenges you to beat the mini-game again, but in a certain way to get the high score. Bragging rights are always fun. My main problem with this, though, is this: Some weapons you unlock early in the game quickly get cast aside by others you unlock later on. Most weapons have a neat side-effect, but this doesn’t really help. Why would you still use the Kingdom Key, when you have unlocked Fenrir or the Ultima Weapon? I know, it has the Defender ability, which slightly increases your defense a bit when your health is low. But I would still pick the more premium Keyblades. And yeah, the secret ending… Disappointing. The combat is also quite shallow. The biggest chunk of the combat system relies on button mashing until everything around you is dead. There are five Summons, but only two of them are a little bit useful, so they’re not worth the use. Square Enix tried to give combat a little more depth by giving you various forms to play around with, called ‘Drive Forms’. All these forms have different abilities, and could change the way in which a battles plays out, but ultimately, you’ll still find yourself button mashing the ‘X’ button until the end of the battle, even if you change your companions’ battle techniques in the status menu. The Reaction Commands, however, are a nice touch to the combat and help pulling it out of the ‘repetitive’ zone a little bit. There are special battles in which you have to press ‘triangle’ here and there to make Sora and friends perform a special move to do great damage to an enemy. Nice touch.

 

The Difficulty

Except for a couple of semi-difficult boss battles, a borderline-frustrating light cycle part in the Tron world, and a fight against Sephiroth that is qiute a challenge, Kingdom Hearts II’s difficulty is toned down greatly since the first Kingdom Hearts. There weren’t as many shortcuts you could make in the status menu in the original Kingdom Hearts, and as such button mash was often a no-go in tough battles. The first Kingdom Hearts required you to stop and think for a second. In Kingdom Hearts II, however, you can beat anything by simply mashing ‘X’ the whole time, often without a second thought, also thanks to the reaction commands. I remember the Large Bodies being a very daunting enemy in the first Kingdom Hearts because you could only hurt them in the back or with magic, but magic wasn’t that reliable in the first Kingdom Hearts. But magic is a lot stronger in Kingdom Hearts II, and once you manage to knock a Large Body off their feet, you can perform a Reaction Command on it to finish it off instantly. This game has a couple of parts that might make you struggle a little, but all in all, this game could have been more of a challenge.

 

Even though the Difficulty paragraph and the end of the Depth paragraph might’ve seemed like I was giving this game a lecture about how bad it was, this is not at all true. There’s Disney cheesiness all around, but Kingdom Hearts II might just be one of my favourite Playstation 2 game ever, even after all this time. My Kingdom Hearts fanboyism might’ve worn off a long time ago due to its confusing prequels, but Kingdom Hearts II is a pearl. If you haven’t played it already, go ahead and play it. But be sure to play the first Kingdom Hearts first.

 

Pros:

-          Visuals are near-perfect

-          A lot to come back for

-          Reaction commands give some more depth to the otherwise shallow combat

-          Most licensed character are spoken in by their official voice actors

-          If you can look away from the cheese, it’s all just very charming

 

Cons:

-          If it weren’t for the cool Reaction Commands, the combat is quite shallow

-          Standard difficulty is too much of a cakewalk

-          Requirements you have to meet in order to unlock the secret ending are terrible

  Graphics 9   Sound 8   Addictive 7   Story 6   Depth 8   Difficulty 4
      Review Rating: 5/5     Submitted: 12-17-13     Review Replies: 1

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