truly one of the best sequels ever made. kingdom hearts 2 improves massively on every aspect of it’s charming but flawed predecessor. at least on critical, the combat is polished to a sheen, with a really refreshing balance between straight-forward inputs and nuanced resource management. combos are dead simple, but kh2 isn’t really about combos in the first place. instead, the player is forced to consider their resources moment-to-moment, and how to get as much as they can out of everything. a lot of these battles are very tight squeezes (or at least they were for me, as i’m a bit inexperienced w action games), and it’s extremely satisfying to win because of a perfectly timed drive form or clever choice of summon. in this sense, i think KH2 gets a lot of mileage out of its fusion of character action and JRPG mechanics. it’s very approachable on a basic mechanical level, but still offers enough nuance to where players can feel confident that they truly learned a lot about the game’s inner workings over the course of their playthrough. a great rpg is balanced by the player’s knowledge of the game, and a great action game is balanced by the player’s muscle memory of the game, but despite these goals seeming completely adverse to each other, kh2 really manages to combine both into a package that i’m confident would please any fan of either genre. i’m not sure how true this would be on the other difficulties, since critical felt almost exactly perfectly balanced to me, but the good side of this is that the combat fundamentals in kh2 are enjoyable enough on their own that you could really just combo trash mobs for a few hours and have fun. there’s still some fights i think are poorly handled (the final boss being by far the worst fight in the game seems to be a kingdom hearts tradition at this point), but when 95% of the game is THIS fun, i really cannot complain. outside of the combat, i’d still say kh2 is an improvement on the original game, but a more marginal one. gimmick sections don’t run as long and control much better than in kh1, but i wouldn’t really say they’re a highlight. navigating worlds is much less obnoxious because of the increased linearity, but this does come with the trade off of many of these areas feeling like themed hallways. i could see people being turned off by just how direct this game is about what it needs you to do, but honestly, i don’t play these games for environmental gimmicks or platforming, so it just doesn’t bother me. the tighter level design also comes with the benefit of creating more controlled pacing for each world without making each world feel rushed or lacking in content. enemy variety is also very good for the majority of the game, though i did feel that enemies reliant on zoning (mages, snipers) didn’t feel as different from other heartless/nobodies as those enemy types did in kh1. these are very small nitpicks though, the majority of my time in KH2FMCM was an absolute blast.

when it comes to storytelling, i’d also say KH2 is mostly an improvement on KH1, though maybe a little less focused than CoM. the concept of nobodies is a really interesting one, but i think they were either written in a contradictory manner by accident, or the narrative is just unwilling to interrogate their existence. we’re told nobodies are essentially monsters imitating the appearance of humanity, but with the information we get within the narrative, that simply can’t be true. we see time and time again that nobodies are capable of feeling emotion, and are very capable of having human flaws; in everything but name they really may as well be humans, and xemnas makes a fairly strong argument when he questions why sora even cares. sora has a personal connection to the events, sure, but he isn’t aware of that until very late into the story anyways. the organization’s goals are, in my opinion, deeply sympathetic. we know from playing as roxas for the intro how unfair their nonexistence is, we can tell that they’re “real” people in many ways, we see several of them get actual development. it’s strange, because i can’t really tell what they’re trying to get across. if nobodies are really emotionless zombies filled with malice, why go through the effort to make us care about roxas and axel? if they’re human in all but name, why have sora spend the plot trying to kill them mostly just because he was told to by some old wizard? the meaning to sora’s narrative is similarly confusing to me; considering KH1 and CoM were such strongly focused around the development of their main characters, it felt odd to me that I couldn’t really think of a definitive statement KH2 was trying to make when it came to sora. is it about self-acceptance? is it about sora conquering nihilism? i really couldn’t tell you. on the bright side, the disney worlds are far more interesting, and the hints at a greater lore are all really cool. just wish it felt more coherent as a single story.

truly one of the best sequels ever made. kingdom hearts 2 improves massively on every aspect of it’s charming but flawed predecessor. at least on critical, the combat is polished to a sheen, with a really refreshing balance between straight-forward inputs and nuanced resource management. combos are dead simple, but kh2 isn’t really about combos in the first place. instead, the player is forced to consider their resources moment-to-moment, and how to get as much as they can out of everything. a lot of these battles are very tight squeezes (or at least they were for me, as i’m a bit inexperienced w action games), and it’s extremely satisfying to win because of a perfectly timed drive form or clever choice of summon. in this sense, i think KH2 gets a lot of mileage out of its fusion of character action and JRPG mechanics. it’s very approachable on a basic mechanical level, but still offers enough nuance to where players can feel confident that they truly learned a lot about the game’s inner workings over the course of their playthrough. a great rpg is balanced by the player’s knowledge of the game, and a great action game is balanced by the player’s muscle memory of the game, but despite these goals seeming completely adverse to each other, kh2 really manages to combine both into a package that i’m confident would please any fan of either genre. i’m not sure how true this would be on the other difficulties, since critical felt almost exactly perfectly balanced to me, but the good side of this is that the combat fundamentals in kh2 are enjoyable enough on their own that you could really just combo trash mobs for a few hours and have fun. there’s still some fights i think are poorly handled (the final boss being by far the worst fight in the game seems to be a kingdom hearts tradition at this point), but when 95% of the game is THIS fun, i really cannot complain. outside of the combat, i’d still say kh2 is an improvement on the original game, but a more marginal one. gimmick sections don’t run as long and control much better than in kh1, but i wouldn’t really say they’re a highlight. navigating worlds is much less obnoxious because of the increased linearity, but this does come with the trade off of many of these areas feeling like themed hallways. i could see people being turned off by just how direct this game is about what it needs you to do, but honestly, i don’t play these games for environmental gimmicks or platforming, so it just doesn’t bother me. the tighter level design also comes with the benefit of creating more controlled pacing for each world without making each world feel rushed or lacking in content. enemy variety is also very good for the majority of the game, though i did feel that enemies reliant on zoning (mages, snipers) didn’t feel as different from other heartless/nobodies as those enemy types did in kh1. these are very small nitpicks though, the majority of my time in KH2FMCM was an absolute blast.

when it comes to storytelling, i’d also say KH2 is mostly an improvement on KH1, though maybe a little less focused than CoM. the concept of nobodies is a really interesting one, but i think they were either written in a contradictory manner by accident, or the narrative is just unwilling to interrogate their existence. we’re told nobodies are essentially monsters imitating the appearance of humanity, but with the information we get within the narrative, that simply can’t be true. we see time and time again that nobodies are capable of feeling emotion, and are very capable of having human flaws; in everything but name they really may as well be humans, and xemnas makes a fairly strong argument when he questions why sora even cares. sora has a personal connection to the events, sure, but he isn’t aware of that until very late into the story anyways. the organization’s goals are, in my opinion, deeply sympathetic. we know from playing as roxas for the intro how unfair their nonexistence is, we can tell that they’re “real” people in many ways, we see several of them get actual development. it’s strange, because i can’t really tell what they’re trying to get across. if nobodies are really emotionless zombies filled with malice, why go through the effort to make us care about roxas and axel? if they’re human in all but name, why have sora spend the plot trying to kill them mostly just because he was told to by some old wizard? the meaning to sora’s narrative is similarly confusing to me; considering KH1 and CoM were such strongly focused around the development of their main characters, it felt odd to me that I couldn’t really think of a definitive statement KH2 was trying to make when it came to sora. is it about self-acceptance? is it about sora conquering nihilism? i really couldn’t tell you. on the bright side, the disney worlds are far more interesting, and the hints at a greater lore are all really cool. just wish it felt more coherent as a single story.

chain of memories is a really interesting game conceptually; it was made as a fairly direct gap-filler to lead into KH2, but it also was in response to demand for a portable version of kh1, and it wanted to make a good explanation in-universe for why progression gets reset from KH1 to KH2. ignoring the fact that the last bit is a very funny reason to make an entire game, this mish-mash of goals creates a very odd playing experience. i felt that the focus in the story on jumbled and distorted memories created a fairly strong justification for the repeated worlds and bosses from KH1, while still recontextualizing those moments in a more interesting way. the semi-randomized dungeon crawler elements are also a really cool way to represent the fickle nature of memory through gameplay, and it's very fun to get limited customization of the room layouts depending on the situation. unfortunately, the focus on memories also extends to the combat system, which is very messy and definitely needed a lot of tuning. contrary to what many people say, i don't actually think splitting actions into cards is the problem here (reverse/rebirth proves this, imo). the bigger issue is the deckbuilding, which feels totally at odds with RPG progression and makes COM oscillate wildly between completely trivial combat and absurdly difficult combat. i tend to be a fan of experimental and "imbalanced" progression systems (the junction system in ff8 is a favorite), but COM's cards feel poorly accounted for; the game offers you relatively few guaranteed cards, and those it gives you are likely going to be pretty far from the cornerstones of your deck. this ends up meaning the boss design needs to account for too many potential playstyles, so you get lots of inflated health bars and lots of bosses that are designed around playing defensively and waiting until they have no chance to counterattack. i think it's actually very charming and cool that many of the bosses play by the same ruleset the player does, but because COM has no idea what cards you have, the only real surefire strategy against many bosses is waiting for them to waste their cards on sleights and catching them reloading over and over. if the progression was not as reliant on lucky pulls from packs, these bosses would be able to have more reliable and interesting counterplay, but unfortunately the systems here just don't allow for that. these incredibly boring and drawn out encounters are most noticeable with the final boss of the main game, where the most reliable strategy i could find was just to parry every attack he throws out with a 0 card, then use the cloud summon to chip at him a few times, repeat repeat repeat. this took about 10 minutes, and might be the most boring boss fight i've ever played.
reverse/rebirth fixes basically all of the issues i mentioned above by just giving you set decks for each floor, which makes most of the fights far more interesting. wayyy faster and less reliant on cheese, i love the emphasis on card dueling.
the story in COM is actually really great by the way. i could personally tell it was written after KH2, but it's still a pretty interesting story that explores the inner psychology of both the protagonists a little bit. there's a lot of cool hints at future games (i think, at least) and the addition of organization 13 is just great. i had found the overemphasis on disney elements in the story of kh1 to be a bit frustrating, so COM's story was a great change of pace.