Review

Written by: Brad

 Kingdom Hearts II is the absolutely amazing sequel for Kingdom Hearts (PS2) and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (Nintendo GBA) released for the Sony PlayStation 2. Developed by Square-Enix company, the game’s release date was on March 28th, 2006.

After director Tetsuya Nomura had been done with the unnexpected sequel of Kingdom Hearts (PS2), Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for the Nintendo Game Boy Advanced, he surprised the Series fans by returning once again into the classical joystick.

Kingdom Hearts II features a lot of imrpovements from its prequel, including a new, fixed and overwhelming camera angle, new game-play dynamics, new content and outstanding material, even more cameos and appearancess from the Disney Universe and the popular Final Fantasy series, better graphics, amazing music and brilliant voice-actings.

Through the game you travel along different Disney Worlds, encountering popular Dinsey and Square-Enix characters in your way. The gameplay of the game has changed greatly, and fans will fall in love with it. It is a game which traps the gamer with its outstanding features, leaving behind the errors from Kingdom Hearts, and creating a much better and enjoyable playability.

Once again, you reprise the role of Sora, a young hero capable of wielding a sacred, unique and strong weapon called the KeyBlade. The KeyBlade is a weapon that is, mainly, useful both as a key to unlock other worlds and as a method for destroying the Heartless, a dark species of monster creature that is taking over the calm and peaceful Disney lands at the behest of Sleeping Beauty‘s very evil and feared witch, Maleficent. Having two of the most popular Disney characters as your companions, Donald Duck, and Goofy, Sora must travel along each world, meeting new friends, enemies, blasting away the heartless and trying to be reunited with his missing friends. In each world, you will meet Disney Characters that will join you in your party, fighting alongside you to help you solve the main conflict in each single land. Sora is capable of creating fighting combinations with every single one of them and interact, which is one of the main sources that makes young expectators enjoy the game to the fullest extent.

As an action role-playing game, Kingdom Hearts II gives the player a very big ammount of freedom, both in determining your characters’ attributes and in resigning yourself to standard combat. The player will be able to do a little bit of both or a lot of one or the other, depending on his/her preferences. Some role-playing gamers will be able to spend plenty of time focusing on the allocation of their abilities, synthesizing new items, and grinding to level up, while those less interested in the role-playing aspects can centralize in enjoying the game and going through it without really paying much attention to their statistics.

Even though, the game has its own flaws in respect of its difficulty levels. The previous game, Kingdom Hearts, only counted with Beginner and Normal Mode, but this time, Kingdom Hearts II counts with Beginner, Normal and Proud Mode. The truth is that the game itself is way too easy on Beginner Mode. You can go through it in about 40 hours of game-play without much effort. As most of the battling system involves button mashing, it is indeed very easy. Most of the battles are short, easy to deal with, and the mini-games are far below a decent challenge of intellect level. This is why, it is really adviced and suggested to start right away with Standart/Normal Mode or Proud Mode, for a better and challengy experience of the game itself.

One of the game’s major exciting facts is the gathering of actors to cast the voices of some of the Main Characters of the game, Haley Joel Osment as the voice of Sora, for example. Square-Enix has achieved the possibility of fusing along with Disney to even use the help of the Original Disney Character’s Voice-Actors to work in the game, including Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean, Ming Na as the voice of Mulan, James Woods as Hades, and the list goes on and on! Something very interesting is that even the game follows the different Disney movies’ script most of the time! For example, in one scene, Captain Barbossa declares to Elizabeth Swann, “You best start believin’ in ghost stories. You’re in one!” and then takes a swig from a bottle of wine, which you can see go all the way down his zombie-pirate chest–it’s a scene that should be more than a little familiar to anyone who has even seen a trailer of Pirates of the Caribbean!

The game has also included an extraordinary ammount of mini-games for nearly every world, which includes the amazing and very loved Gummi Ship missions and mini-games! Yes, that is right. Before being able to burst into the different worlds, there is a Gummi Ship Path you need to clear before! This brings into the game a really old and classical theme from the popular “Galactic Combat” style games, featuring the space scenary in which you must get through receiving the less possible damage and destroying every ship you get in contact with! These missions also gather new ammo, equipment and features for your current ship, and even new ships with improvements for you to switch with! It even counts with the possibility and capability of the gamer to be able to create his or her own ship to space around with!

Another new feature included in the game is the ability to use Drive Forms! These are called to the alternate forms of Sora, each one of them specialized in an area such as Strenght, Magic, Defense, etcetera. During gameplay, as Sora beats enemies down, these will drop items with the forms of yellow balls named as Drive/Gauge Orbs/Balls, which will fill a new bar on Sora’s statistics called the Drive Gauge, giving Sora the ability to temporarily change form into a Drive Form –obtainable during plot process–, a more powerful version of him with alternate clothes, most of the times letting him hold not one, but two KeyBlades at once! This creates a whole new gate to new Combination Attacks and abilities. The Drive Forms are a whole new experience to the game which players will definately enjoy!

Kingdom Hearts II is a new world to discover. It has improved greatly from its prequel, and it will captivate the heart of every single player! This game combines Disney, Square-Enix Animé style, RPG and creativity into one, creating an absolutely amazing result! Highly recommended, as it is an adventure you will never forget!

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