Kingdom Hearts II is an action role-playing game, and the primary entry to the series since the 2002 Disney Interactive and Square collaboration. The game's setting is a collection of various levels (referred to in-game as "worlds") that the player progresses through. As in the first game, it II allows the player to travel to locales from various Disney works, along with original worlds specifically created for the series.
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História ok, controles bom, diversão garantida. A câmera continua sendo um problema, porém melhor que a do KH1.
Even as a adult I can see how special this game is like I get it now
Peak
This review contains spoilers
"Xehanort... foolish apprentice of a foolish man. You have surpassed nothing--only proven how little we both know."
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I guess if you start at rock bottom, the only place left to go is up. Kingdom Hearts II is a technically better follow up to the first entry (as well as a continuation of the story that we followed through Re:Chain of Memories as well) that still falls flat on being a serious game. When 90% of your JRPG is a retelling of Disney direct-to-dvd sequels, it becomes hard to take the remaining 10% seriously, and when 8 of that 10% is the most flat and generic "light vs dark, good vs evil" narrative, there's almost nothing left to appreciate. Like DiZ says in his secret reports: when you're left without a heart, what becomes of the body and soul? This is similar to how I feel about this game, it feels like it's lacking an actual heart. Sora, Riku, and Kairi are tragically static and underdeveloped as characters and it's hard to take any of the story seriously when Donald Duck and Goofy shadow you the entire time to make wacky remarks that fit in Mickey Mouse Club House. This is not an issue with sincerity, it's an issue with presentation. Kingdom Hearts as a series is burdened by the fact that it is a Disney game for children (designated by the E10+ rating on the box of every game) and fails to deliver a compelling story that mixes with these elements (let us not forget the Final Fantasy characters, like the developers have!). The Disney world retellings, as mentioned prior, aren't even good! Half of them are of bad movies (I am so glad I had to play 2 different segments of Aladdin 2: Return of Jafar!) and the other half are rushed and half-baked retellings of the 2nd and 3rd acts of their respective movies that somehow manage to be triple the length. If Kingdom Hearts had more originality in these stories then it's likely that these worlds would be less of a slog, but unfortunately they feel like mini advertisements for Disney properties. The gameplay is incredibly simple and not very diverse between bosses, with a few notable exceptions. Spamming X (or on other platforms, the attack button) is the correct strategy for almost all bosses until spamming Triangle to do a react command becomes the strategy. It's surely mindless fun, but it lacks any real substance, which is generally how I feel about most of this game. It's great! for kids! But the fact that this game is held in such a high regard feels like rose-tinted goggles of nostalgia taking over.
As I mentioned before, the main cast of this game is static and boring, but one thing I do have to hand Kingdom Hearts II is that its cast outside of the main cast is compelling. I personally have hope for 385/2 Days and Birth By Sleep if not for the fact that they DON'T have Sora and his Disney pals chasing down Kairi and Riku. I don't care about Kairi and Riku! I also don't care about Sora! These characters are so incredibly underdeveloped that when a character showing a remnant of a character arc like Axel showed up, it felt like fresh air being burst into the game. Ansem the Wise also stood out as a captivating character who I wanted to see more of. My hope for Birth by Sleep especially is that the fact that these characters are more important will propel it above the previous titles, if not by accident, but I have to admit that I am not exactly excited for the return to Sora's story, and would rather stay away. The issue with Sora and Co., and the reason why I'm saying all of this, is that Kingdom Hearts constantly has the workings of a fantastic franchise, but it's constantly held back by its main characters being so much worse than they could be. The story is perfectly easy to follow, and the 30 minutes of it between the prologue and final dungeon were great! But I think what made it compelling to me was that it felt like Sora was an accessory to the world that's more interesting than he is and not the center of it; the Secret Ansem Reports were very interesting to me from the perspective that the heartless were framed in a way that made them seem like body horror, the result of a man losing sight of his pupils' hubrises and not realizing they've been overcome by a force that made them experiment on people to create monsters--but you'd never get this from our main cast because Sora would just say something like "The dark is the opposite of the light which happens when the heart has no good and only has bad because its evil and not nice!". The main cast of Sora, Goofy, Donald, Riku, and Kairi show no real signs of becoming any more than cardboard cutouts with generic personality traits who talk about light being good and darkness being bad, which is an issue in 40 hour character focused JRPGs.
The combat in this game is easily the best its been so far even if it is simple as all hell, the way attacks flow into each other does not feel clunky at all like it did in Kingdom Hearts 1, and the bosses don't all feel poorly designed (only some of them!) at the cost of some generic movesets. Limits and Drive Forms are a great addition that I found myself under-utilizing. The world design, however, is a massive step down. Linear hallways and large, open spaces too big for the characters are almost all you get in this game, which is unfortunate coming off of Kingdom Hearts 1 which didn't have the BEST world design ever, but felt engaging enough for what it is. Coupled with the fact that you have to revisit every world in Kingdom Hearts 2, the design just does not cut it. Final Fantasy XIII is constantly panned for this too--XIII... coincidence? Yeah. But I don't understand what makes this game held so highly in the eyes of so many people. Pretty much every design choice in the worlds feels rock bottom, so if this is the best then I'd hate to see the worst (thankfully, Coded is not in the 1.5+2.5 Collection!).
I don't think Kingdom Hearts II is a game worth playing or worth remembering, but I think that it shows promise that Kingdom Hearts and Re:Chain of Memories never did, and for the first time, I'm hopeful for what's ahead in this series. I know Tetsuya Nomura can be a great writer, we just need to blunt force the good writing out of him into this series in particular, for some reason.
---
I guess if you start at rock bottom, the only place left to go is up. Kingdom Hearts II is a technically better follow up to the first entry (as well as a continuation of the story that we followed through Re:Chain of Memories as well) that still falls flat on being a serious game. When 90% of your JRPG is a retelling of Disney direct-to-dvd sequels, it becomes hard to take the remaining 10% seriously, and when 8 of that 10% is the most flat and generic "light vs dark, good vs evil" narrative, there's almost nothing left to appreciate. Like DiZ says in his secret reports: when you're left without a heart, what becomes of the body and soul? This is similar to how I feel about this game, it feels like it's lacking an actual heart. Sora, Riku, and Kairi are tragically static and underdeveloped as characters and it's hard to take any of the story seriously when Donald Duck and Goofy shadow you the entire time to make wacky remarks that fit in Mickey Mouse Club House. This is not an issue with sincerity, it's an issue with presentation. Kingdom Hearts as a series is burdened by the fact that it is a Disney game for children (designated by the E10+ rating on the box of every game) and fails to deliver a compelling story that mixes with these elements (let us not forget the Final Fantasy characters, like the developers have!). The Disney world retellings, as mentioned prior, aren't even good! Half of them are of bad movies (I am so glad I had to play 2 different segments of Aladdin 2: Return of Jafar!) and the other half are rushed and half-baked retellings of the 2nd and 3rd acts of their respective movies that somehow manage to be triple the length. If Kingdom Hearts had more originality in these stories then it's likely that these worlds would be less of a slog, but unfortunately they feel like mini advertisements for Disney properties. The gameplay is incredibly simple and not very diverse between bosses, with a few notable exceptions. Spamming X (or on other platforms, the attack button) is the correct strategy for almost all bosses until spamming Triangle to do a react command becomes the strategy. It's surely mindless fun, but it lacks any real substance, which is generally how I feel about most of this game. It's great! for kids! But the fact that this game is held in such a high regard feels like rose-tinted goggles of nostalgia taking over.
As I mentioned before, the main cast of this game is static and boring, but one thing I do have to hand Kingdom Hearts II is that its cast outside of the main cast is compelling. I personally have hope for 385/2 Days and Birth By Sleep if not for the fact that they DON'T have Sora and his Disney pals chasing down Kairi and Riku. I don't care about Kairi and Riku! I also don't care about Sora! These characters are so incredibly underdeveloped that when a character showing a remnant of a character arc like Axel showed up, it felt like fresh air being burst into the game. Ansem the Wise also stood out as a captivating character who I wanted to see more of. My hope for Birth by Sleep especially is that the fact that these characters are more important will propel it above the previous titles, if not by accident, but I have to admit that I am not exactly excited for the return to Sora's story, and would rather stay away. The issue with Sora and Co., and the reason why I'm saying all of this, is that Kingdom Hearts constantly has the workings of a fantastic franchise, but it's constantly held back by its main characters being so much worse than they could be. The story is perfectly easy to follow, and the 30 minutes of it between the prologue and final dungeon were great! But I think what made it compelling to me was that it felt like Sora was an accessory to the world that's more interesting than he is and not the center of it; the Secret Ansem Reports were very interesting to me from the perspective that the heartless were framed in a way that made them seem like body horror, the result of a man losing sight of his pupils' hubrises and not realizing they've been overcome by a force that made them experiment on people to create monsters--but you'd never get this from our main cast because Sora would just say something like "The dark is the opposite of the light which happens when the heart has no good and only has bad because its evil and not nice!". The main cast of Sora, Goofy, Donald, Riku, and Kairi show no real signs of becoming any more than cardboard cutouts with generic personality traits who talk about light being good and darkness being bad, which is an issue in 40 hour character focused JRPGs.
The combat in this game is easily the best its been so far even if it is simple as all hell, the way attacks flow into each other does not feel clunky at all like it did in Kingdom Hearts 1, and the bosses don't all feel poorly designed (only some of them!) at the cost of some generic movesets. Limits and Drive Forms are a great addition that I found myself under-utilizing. The world design, however, is a massive step down. Linear hallways and large, open spaces too big for the characters are almost all you get in this game, which is unfortunate coming off of Kingdom Hearts 1 which didn't have the BEST world design ever, but felt engaging enough for what it is. Coupled with the fact that you have to revisit every world in Kingdom Hearts 2, the design just does not cut it. Final Fantasy XIII is constantly panned for this too--XIII... coincidence? Yeah. But I don't understand what makes this game held so highly in the eyes of so many people. Pretty much every design choice in the worlds feels rock bottom, so if this is the best then I'd hate to see the worst (thankfully, Coded is not in the 1.5+2.5 Collection!).
I don't think Kingdom Hearts II is a game worth playing or worth remembering, but I think that it shows promise that Kingdom Hearts and Re:Chain of Memories never did, and for the first time, I'm hopeful for what's ahead in this series. I know Tetsuya Nomura can be a great writer, we just need to blunt force the good writing out of him into this series in particular, for some reason.
(you may consider this a review of the final mix version of the game as well)
if i were a bit less head-over-heels in love with this game i'd probably knock half a star off for certain aspects such as drive form grinding, reflega being way overpowered, and critical mode being an interesting but ultimately flawed way of doing the hardest difficulty, among other quibbles
but if you'd be so merciful
i'd like to be happy
kingdom hearts 2 is a game that screams "SPECTACLE" in big, bold letters, but it rarely ever sacrifices being fun to play and mechanically interesting in the process. kingdom hearts has always straddled the line between being rpg-focused in its design and action-focused. 1 focuses more on the rpg, this one more on the action.
it's hard to explain how good it feels to play kingdom hearts 2 without just making incomprehensible hand gestures while i grab a chandelier and slam it into a big, invisible monster in order to turn it visible again
but i think most non-fans are convinced that kingdom hearts has, at the very least, pretty good combat. but dammit i am going to advocate for the story, too
okay sure, concessions time. the disney worlds are at a 7:3 split for being pointless to the overall story. it ain't great when you go to mulan world and its a bad retelling of the mulan plot
but the times where you go into a world like space paranoids and get to see the plot of tron seamlessly integrating into the existing stories of hollow bastion, or how xaldin uses the rose and belle as a means to draw out the beast's darkness, leading to a plot that tangentially resembles the film's arc but takes things in new directions, that shit's worth it
also belle gets to elbow xaldin which personally is just very funny
and can we talk about how risky it was to have 2 hours of "some guy you've never met" as the main character, and it WORKS? it so perfectly evokes the feeling of comfortable life fading away for reasons you don't understand, and roxas as a character is just fucking depressing, even if you don't already know the specifics of why he's in this pickle to begin with
just with this prologue, roxas ends up casting a shadow that lingers throughout the entire game and culminates in one of the best boss fights in the series near the end of the game
the final mix version adds this boss fight where there was previously just a cutscene, and the final mix version in general adds a lot of great things to the game that weren't previously there. i'll forever love nomura for the additions of the absent silhouettes/data fights and the lingering will
though maybe cut half a forever off for the mushroom xiii
anyways, i love this game. it probably should've been the end of the "dark seeker saga" because the ending cutscene is just so damn satisfying after spending so long looking for riku and kairi, but we've got a whole other batch of games to go through before we see how it (not really) ends
i'll get there in a bit
if i were a bit less head-over-heels in love with this game i'd probably knock half a star off for certain aspects such as drive form grinding, reflega being way overpowered, and critical mode being an interesting but ultimately flawed way of doing the hardest difficulty, among other quibbles
but if you'd be so merciful
i'd like to be happy
kingdom hearts 2 is a game that screams "SPECTACLE" in big, bold letters, but it rarely ever sacrifices being fun to play and mechanically interesting in the process. kingdom hearts has always straddled the line between being rpg-focused in its design and action-focused. 1 focuses more on the rpg, this one more on the action.
it's hard to explain how good it feels to play kingdom hearts 2 without just making incomprehensible hand gestures while i grab a chandelier and slam it into a big, invisible monster in order to turn it visible again
but i think most non-fans are convinced that kingdom hearts has, at the very least, pretty good combat. but dammit i am going to advocate for the story, too
okay sure, concessions time. the disney worlds are at a 7:3 split for being pointless to the overall story. it ain't great when you go to mulan world and its a bad retelling of the mulan plot
but the times where you go into a world like space paranoids and get to see the plot of tron seamlessly integrating into the existing stories of hollow bastion, or how xaldin uses the rose and belle as a means to draw out the beast's darkness, leading to a plot that tangentially resembles the film's arc but takes things in new directions, that shit's worth it
also belle gets to elbow xaldin which personally is just very funny
and can we talk about how risky it was to have 2 hours of "some guy you've never met" as the main character, and it WORKS? it so perfectly evokes the feeling of comfortable life fading away for reasons you don't understand, and roxas as a character is just fucking depressing, even if you don't already know the specifics of why he's in this pickle to begin with
just with this prologue, roxas ends up casting a shadow that lingers throughout the entire game and culminates in one of the best boss fights in the series near the end of the game
the final mix version adds this boss fight where there was previously just a cutscene, and the final mix version in general adds a lot of great things to the game that weren't previously there. i'll forever love nomura for the additions of the absent silhouettes/data fights and the lingering will
though maybe cut half a forever off for the mushroom xiii
anyways, i love this game. it probably should've been the end of the "dark seeker saga" because the ending cutscene is just so damn satisfying after spending so long looking for riku and kairi, but we've got a whole other batch of games to go through before we see how it (not really) ends
i'll get there in a bit
Riku cheveux longs mon combat