Kingdom Hearts II reviewed

When the first Kingdom Hearts game hit shelves it was wildly successful and wildly awesome.  So naturally a sequel was ordered up and rushed to unsuspecting gamers hands as they expressed horrible anger and disappointment.  Then it was combined with a story that was an Idiot Plot and a battles system that was completely stupid that only complete morons liked it.  But enough about Chain of Memories - seriously cards?  Lucky for you guys we're talking about the real sequel that doesn't suck in any way, so let's dig right into Kingdom Hearts II.

So this takes place a year after the first game but what have you been doing for that time?  Doing the events of Chain of Memories...sigh, there's a Let's Play of it which you can google so you can be up to speed.  Anyways, after that and THE LONGEST PROLOGUE EVER(which is not that bad, but it is that long) Sora, Donald & Goofy finally awaken.  But the world has changed as the Heartless have come back with Pete & Maleficient, who came back from the dead since she's magic, leading them.  Then there's this new faction called Origination XIII which control Nobodies, the souls and bodies of Heartless that are rebuilding Kingdom Hearts to find and take back their own hearts.

The game play here is very much improved from the first game.  The camera is much better and much smoother with it actually going where you want it to go.  The battles system has expanded into something a bit more than button mashing.  There's these new-fangled reaction commands that allow you to use the enemies attacks against them in an incredibly badass way.  There's also the Drive Commands that let you merge with either Donald or Goofy and do incredible feats of awesome like dual-wielding keyblades or firing bolts of energy towards your enemies.  On a pure technical level, this is much better than the first game.

But that's not what strikes me about the game.  That's not what I first remember about this game.  It's how almost everyone takes a huge level in badass.  Sora has his reaction and his drive commands that make him much more awesome.  Once Riku abandons the darkness, long story, he starts to kick some ass and then pilot some hovercraft thingy.  Kairi, of all people, briefly gets a keyblade decorated with girly flowers and kills a few heartless in one hit!  Even Mickey Mouse is a huge badass and I'm not making that up, he even has a badass longcoat.  By the end, this game becomes so badass that I just wanted to eat a raw steak with my bare hands in commemoration of it's manliness.

However there is a problem and that's the story. I don't want to say that it's too complex, even though it is very complex with some replays to make sense of it, but the game is split between The Heartless and Organization XIII.  The problem is that The Heartless storyline is pretty much the same as the first game and it is pretty boring....which is the main focus of the game.  Organization XIII's storyline is much more interesting with better villains and some border-line thought on how they tick but aside from the beginning and end, they don't really show up that much which is a shame since the game is best when it's focused on them.

So is this game better than the first Kingdom Hearts?  It's a bit hard to say, on an objective level it is better than the first one in most ways.  The only real flaw I can actually criticize is that voice-acting is a bit weaker since Haley Joel Osment's man-voice for Sora isn't very good most of the time.  Then again, they got Christopher Lee in this so that cancels that out.  On a pure fun level though, I'd play the first game in a heartbeat but for this, I kind of have to be in the right frame of mind and bone up on my Kingdom Hearts mythology to make sense out of this.  It's still a very good game though, it's just not as good.

9/10