Game Finished In 2024 #21:

Double Marathon #6

Shocking! Game widely regarded as a classic is in fact really good!

I had spoken about Yakuza Kiwami 2 being a sequel that improves everything but honestly this is the true example of that. After the scrappy start of KH1, and the weird diversion of COM, KH2 represents a series that has well and truly found its identity. While I praised KH1 for having a true attempt at a genre mishmash, KH2 feels much more like its own animal, taking what worked best in KH1 while also trimming a lot of what didn't. The combat has been well and truly refined, with plenty of additions and changes that overall make for a significantly better experience. Improvements line the game down to even the UI, which now changes in display depending on what world you're in, something that can only be described with the word "Soul". You also now have the ability to see where you're going at any time, what treasure chests you have opened, and more, which greatly improves QOL. When I say everything is improved from KH1 I well and truly mean it. Perhaps the only thing KH1 does better is platforming, which is vastly reduced in KH2.

The more things change, however, the more they stay the same. Again, what made KH1 good is refined. Gummi Ship segments, which were previously in the realm of "serviceable", are now real ass shmup segments. My only wish would be that these segments had more reason to replay them, as you do not get anything besides more Gummi Ship stuff from doing them. The Gummi Ship, of course, serves to transport you between worlds, and those worlds certainly deliver. The experience of going between worlds is largely the same as in KH1, with a lot of the linearity remained intact. However, the world quality has skyrocketed. Not only do the best old worlds return in improved ways, new worlds are introduced that use excellent themes and follow up with worlds represented by characters who lacked one in KH1. Port Royal, Timeless River, and Space Paranoids are all special highlights. You also visit each world twice in order to finish the game, which results in a well paced game, just over 30 hours by my playtime.

The combat refinements truly shine fighting the enemies and bosses of each world. The gimmicks have been severely reduced, and the ones that remain are significantly more interactive. In fact, you can argue one of the main aspects of combat is a gimmick now. Reaction Commands are essentially QTEs that most enemies and bosses have that let you deal extra damage to them with correct timing. Certainly most of them lean more cinematic than interactive, but when the cinematics are this fucking cool I think that's fine, actually. Every Keyblade has a unique ability attached which helps a lot in making them stand out, though statlines still exist enough to mean you probably won't be dragging the Kingdom Key to the end of the game. Builds are still easy to make, and your choice at the start still has an impact but it's lessened. I went with magic again, and the new MP mechanics took a fair bit to get used to but mostly worked in the end. I do wish the recharge state was a bit quicker but otherwise it was fine.

The biggest addition to the combat is Drive Forms, which are temporary super modes Sora can access when he has the meter to. This meter also lets you use summons, which for reasons I will get into meant I did not use summons at all. The forms introduce multiple new movesets, with unique abilities, and are all fun to use. Unfortunately, there's a couple of wrinkles that bring the system down for me. You need to level up the forms to get more out of them, which sounds fine on paper until the requirements for leveling each form come into play, and all of them except Valor, which is just doing a lot of hits, depend on you having knowledge of when you'll get an opportunity to level them that you simply do not have on a first playthrough. Recovering Drive gauge is just annoying enough that I felt incentivized to save it, but I often regretted not using it when I thought it was safe to save, and regretting not saving it when I thought it was safe to use it. Not helping matters is Anti Form, which is specifically a negative form you invoke by using forms too much. This tends to come out at horrible times, and does not count towards leveling any form, rendering the time you spent building meter irrelevant. I do not inherently mind the idea of a form like this, but paired with how finicky and annoying leveling is it was just unpleasant most of the time. This is by far my biggest flaw with the game.

Plotwise, the game takes some interesting turns from KH1 and I guess COM too. The setting expands more, the characters are fleshed out and new ones are added, and it tells a good story overall. I was kind of surprised and even a bit disappointed at just how inessential COM was. Because Sora forgot everything that happened in that game, it kind of only matters in the sense that it explains where half of Organization 13 went and why the game opens like it does. Except, because Sora forgot all of it, or wasn't there for it in Riku's case, anything that matters is directly explained to him already. I do enjoy Organization 13's presence overall in the plot, as the villains in KH1 felt a fair bit less defined.

KH2 is what happens when a bold idea like KH1 is allowed to succeed and iterate upon itself. It does new interesting things, refines the solid core, and rightfully earns its classic status.