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Hello hello everyone, and welcome to the third review in the Month Of Keys: A Review of All Things Kingdom Hearts (minus the ongoing mobile title and backcover movie).

So let's get right to it!



Naturally with the phenomenal success of the original Kingdom Hearts with its mixture of creativity with the story, unique at the time gameplay, top tier voice cast, and just overall gorgeous look...it was natural that a sequel would be in the works.

So insert Kingdom Hearts II here.

"But Pengu" I hear you say, "Kingdom Hearts already had a second title that you reviewed called Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.  Shouldn't this be Kingdom Hearts III?"

Yeah, well people are fickle, and you'll learn that people are such when it comes to numbered titles that anything that isn't numbered isn't worth it normally.  Unless it has that shiny number on it to say that it's directly related (I guess), it automatically holds almost zero importance to fans.

In this game's case, however, it was actually announced before Chain of Memories, and CoM at the beginning was intended to be a bridge between Kingdom Hearts I and II...despite the fact that, yes, it's still technically a sequel in every respective way despite it not being numbered.  But as you'll learn in this series of 9 games with only 3 sequels...that's pretty par for the course for them to release sequels (or even prequels) and avoid numbering them, because they know that those number sequels are what build the most hype for fans (and the un-numbered sequels give them a chance to experiment as they build to the "actual" sequel).

So let's talk Kingdom Hearts II.

With as big of bold of a game that Kingdom Hearts I was at its time, and with the somewhat disappointment that Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories brought to fans with its Gameboy Advance release, how was Kingdom Hearts II?

Actually, it was definitely a very welcomed sequel at least in my opinion.  Were there bumps? Absolutely.  Despite the continued overall great voice cast, there were some definite misses and terrible impressions from people playing the parts that they couldn't (or wouldn't) get the original actors back for.  One of the worlds became almost controversial when it embraced a side that nobody expected and many fans were livid about.  Despite the original's mildly simple to understand story, this is one of the first games where it started to try being a bit more "Deep" and "complex" and began its journey into what we know today as an extremely convoluted and many times confusing story.

But despite those bumps, it was still a very charming story and actually at times it was even a little gripping.  Could it get sappy? Absolutely, and I still hold on to the idea that Sora is that gleeful 5 year old trapped in a teenager's body.  It was also a game that threw some fans (including myself) off at first because Haley Joel Osment had gone through puberty since this game, so his voice was significantly different.  But despite it being a bit to get to used to at first, it grew on me (though as I mentioned in the last review, it really didn't fit in Chain of Memories).

Speaking of Final Mix, II also had a Final Mix version that was only released in Japan, and didn't release in elsewhere until Kingdom Hearts II.5 Remix for the PS3 and then PS4/Xbone.  Whereas the first one introduced some new weapons/items, heartless reskins, a new superboss, and some new cutscenes...Kingdom Hearts II went a little further.  But, before I get too crazy, let's just dive into it, shall we?

Story
After a really kickass intro, we're introduced to a character who isn't Sora living his life with his friends in a place called Twilight Town.  But in just 7 days, his life becomes more and more out of control and off of the rails as various events threaten to end his life, all so that Sora can wake up.

Needless to say, since you know this is going to be Sora's game, I'm sure you can guess where it leads to in the end, and it's actually a little sad since the game really gets you connecting with this character.  But, since Final Fantasy XII, I'm not surprised when Square decides to throw us a character just for something to happen to them because they're only connected in some way to the actual main character.  But unlike XII (although Recks' death was really sad in its own way), the game throws a whole bunch of different curveballs at Roxas that makes his a little extra sad in some ways.

So, once Sora is awake, the story shifts somewhat closer to what you'd expect with what Chain of Memories began to set up.  There's a group of enemies known as Organization XIII spread out causing chaos throughout many of the worlds.  They basically want to sacrifice as many hearts as possible to Kingdom Hearts so that they can get their wish, and will use any underhanded means to accomplish their goal.  Naturally, your goal is to stop them, save the different worlds, and put an end to their plans for good.

Alright...so I'm going to give the game some heavy props.  Compared to KH1 where I was definitely more heavily invested in the gameplay and Disney world stories, this is one where...sure, gameplay and the Disney world stories (for the most part) were great...but I was even more invested with the actual original story going on.  Compared to the first one, this one just seemed like it had so much more depth to it, and the worlds had more reason for being visited.  KH1 had worlds that had reasons for being visited (although they were mainly just where some of the villains in Maleficent's group came from), but 2 actually gave more reason by adding the main antagonists as well as Maleficent visiting them (with 1 exception).  Now it was no longer just visiting worlds like Deep Jungle or Monstro for basically kicks, but because they had something going on in them.

It was also kind of neat because in KH1, you visit a world once and finish it, and that's it.  In KH2, you'll visit each of the worlds twice (with one being more than twice most likely) for two different stories: one for when you first visit, and one for events that happen after you already fixed the problems the first time around.

You even get to visit a world of the "past" as well as the Cyberspace world each with their own actual ties to the story as well, so...again outside of a single world they all feel like they actually serve a purpose to the game.  Hell, even the returning Hundred Acre Wood has a surprisingly phenomenal side story to it, and it's one of the skippable ones that I absolutely do not recommend skipping because it's just such a damn charming bit.

And like the first game, Kingdom Hearts II also has a great secret movie that reveals the next game that was in the works at the time.  Although, people were initially disappointed because whereas KH1's secret movie was about KH2...KH2's secret movie was not about Kingdom Hearts III but was instead revealing Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (which I'll talk about in the next review).

Overall, the story all around was great, and sometimes pretty charming or endearing.  Were there some areas that could have been less of a quick rehash of the movie they came from (*cough* Mulan and Lion King *cough*) absolutely.  But at the same time I appreciated that they emphasized a little more on the original story and less like we were re-watching the old Disney movies.  I'll also add that this was made even better with Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix/ II.5 Remix with the added cutscenes to give more context to certain events of the game.  I'd say aside from some minor hiccups, the story was still pretty strong if not a little stronger than Kingdom Hearts I...though in many ways I still appreciated the original story a bit more.

Gameplay
Thankfully, there was no traces of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories gameplay in here, and in fact the game refined a bit of Kingdom Hearts I's battle system a bit.  Basically everything you remember about Kingdom Hearts I's battles remains unchanged with some caveats.  Battles are back to being real-time unlike CoM, and your actions aren't dictated by card values or things like that.  Like in KH1, you run up, attack with your keyblade, have a menu where you can use magic, summons, and items...or you can shortcut magic/items to be more seamless in battle.

Admittedly, I found summons outside of Genie and Peter Pan to be incredibly useless.  In KH1 they could be pretty useless as well outside of Tinkerbell and Bambi (who were great when you needed health/mp), but there was always that situation where Simba, Mushu, and Dumbo could have been a little useful...you just never really needed them.  In KH2, again outside of Genie and Peter Pan, there's really absolutely no use for the other two.  I'll also note that KH2 actually cut out the total number of summons compared to the first game, with KH1 having 6 total and KH2 having 4 (and KH3 later having 5).

But that's okay, because they took one thing that had issues for me in the first game, and fixed it.  If you remember with companion characters in the first game, they really didn't do a a monumental difference in battle, and there was very little point in switching out the main crew with them because they didn't even level up if they weren't in the party (which KHI.5/Final Mix later fixed).  Kingdom Hearts II however overhauled companions a bit, making them a bit more useful and making you think a little harder on who you wanted in your party alongside Sora.

Along with leveling up with you whether or not they were actually in the party, companions also had more unique skills that they'd actually use in battle.  On top of that were Team skills...mainly ones that you'd initiate when you had full MP and they were ready for it, and you'd do a dual attack followed by a nice finisher.  Every companion including Donald and Goofy had their own Team skills that they could learn, and some such as Beast and Simba's were great to use on the battlefield.

On top of added companion usefulness, one of the game's biggest new features was the use of Drives (which when I asked a friend on a messageboard what the drive was back in 2004 when it was in development, she playfully replied "maybe Sora learns how to drive a car?).  With this feature you're presented a whole new gauge called your Drive Gauge, which has a number next to it (starting off as 1 normally).  The more you use and level up your Drives, the longer you'll be able to use that.  On top of that, you'll also learn unique skills such as Double Jump and Glide/Superglide the more often you use and level up certain Drives, which is a pretty different approach compared to how you obtained them in the first game.  But in basic sense, Drives transform your character and have them wielding 2 or more keyblades, emphasizing certain stats or giving you better advantages (Valor form giving you great attack, Wisdom turning your attack into shots and upping your magic power and MP recovery, for example).

Much like Kingdom Hearts I, II had a "Station of Awakening" Scenario where you choose a weapon to take, and one to give up.  It's treated a little less important in this game despite it actually having slightly more importance (since it can affect what skills you learn compared to the last game).

There's also different types of battles depending on where you're at in the game.  Some may have a somewhat hidden sort of time-limit attached to them, such as defeating all of the Heartless and keeping your Morale up (which otherwise would make you automatically lose if it goes to 0), or preventing too much damage to a building, or something to that effect.  Basically, the game adds a bigger sense of urgency to more of your battles outside of just killing everything at your own pace.

I forgot to mention there's also the addition of Reaction Commands that help make the battles more interesting.  At certain points when an enemy is about to attack, you'll see a triangle command pop up saying that you can do something to counter the attack before it happens.  This can include confusing a Nobody by moving around strangely and getting a jump on it, stealing an enemy's sword/weapon and beating them with it, or even countering a boss in a specific way to give you more of an edge.  And this is all on top of being able to still block and even reflect projectiles back at a shooting enemy.

Not to mention, there's a lot of sidequests to keep one busy outside of battles.  Colosseum? Yeah, it's back...although not in the form you may have been expecting once you reach that world.  As mentioned earlier, Hundred Acre Wood is back with all new mini games compared to the first game and CoM, so don't expect any repeats in that area.

the superboss from KH1 is also back, and he's probably just as difficult (though I've heard not as difficult) as he was in the first game.  He's the only optional superboss in the regular KH2 game.

KH2.5/Final Mix however, flavors the game with a few optional bosses including another incredibly difficult superboss to tie into Birth By Sleep.  But it also adds a new area called the Caverns of Rememberance, where you can fight data versions of the entire cast of Organization XIII...including the ones from Chain of Memories.

If you recall Kingdom Hearts I where you had to swim around as a merman, KH2 keeps that mechanic for the returning world of Atlantica, but also adds a new one for the Pride Lands.  In that world, you get to run, swing your keyblade, and tackle things as a lion.  At first it takes a little adjusting to, but it actually becomes surprisingly easy very fast to get a handle on it.

But oh boy...speaking of Atlantica, let's talk about that controversial world addition for a second.

Now, if you remember Atlantica from the first game (and CoM in its way), it acted like a normal world with the hitch that you basically swim everywhere (which you didn't do in CoM for reasons).  But despite that, there were still enemies to fight, a coherent story to go with it that wasn't completely attached to the movie, and overall it still fit as a legitimately alright world.

Atlantica in KH2 though...oh boy.  So right off the bat in entering this world, you'll know there's going to be problems when the only explorable part is super small.  No exits to other areas (only the option to leave the world) or anything, just a tiny little hub area.  This is because Atlantica is a mini-game musical world where you participate in different song numbers of pressing the buttons correctly while the charaters sing through songs you know from the movie as well as two original ones.

Yes, you read that right: It's a musical mini game world of precise button mashing.  Every song number, even the big battle with Ursula is a song mini-game.  It's not a world that can be completed all at once except for near the end of the game, because it requires certain conditions to be able to unlock the next song to play.  But the baffling things about this world are:

*It loosely but more closely follows the first movie compared to Atlantica from the first game.  There's not legitmate reason for this world to exist for KH2 story reasons except as a novelty.
*Ursula is somehow alive, and despite everyone remembering Sora and crew, nobody seems to remember Ursula being defeated in the first game which seems odd at the slightest.

Overall, it was odd.  But that's really my only real gripe with the gameplay aspect, as everything else was pretty solid.

Hell, even Gummi Ships were a lot more fun in this game.  Yeah, remember how one of my gripes in the first game was that it was almost mind-numbingly simple and basically pointless?  Well, KH2 took what was a bland open movement way of travel and turned it into an on-rails side shooter type of mini game, which I personally found 10x more exciting as well as just more challenging.  Despite me thinking that Gummi travel was still basically pointless filler to pad time, it was at least more entertaining filler this time around.  The music for the different areas was great, the battles themselves were great...overall, Gummi Ship sections in this game were just much more fun.

Added Note: I'll also mention that I liked KH2's revamped UI.  The menu itself looked a bit nicer, but I loved the redone enemy HP meter as well as the revamped player HP/MP/Drive meter.  It just looked much more sleek and nice compared to the original game.

Graphics
Overall, this game still looked as gorgeous as the first with some added pluses, as well as a minus or two...or more.  First off, again I loved the overall creativity level of this game in many ways.  Returning worlds such as Olympus Colosseum and Halloween Town were greatly expanded on with new areas, and they looked great.  Honestly, if it wasn't for Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge blowing the look out of the water, I would have said that KH2 had the best looking Halloween Town rendition outside of the movie.  But worlds were much more carefully crafted and just looked prettier, more like what they should look like in a Kingdom Hearts game.








However, much like KH1, I did have some gripes here and there.

First off, Port Royal was absolutely ugly.  Now I don't mean the world itself, because the overall world was really quite nice to look at.  I loved the style and usage of colors for the world because it really just fit the tone for Curse of the Black Pearl.

Character wise, yikes.  Kingdom Hearts 2 tried to, which I'll give some credit for, go above and beyond and make the characters look as much like their real life counterparts as they could.  The result...was pretty yikes.  It was almost uncanny valley levels of "trying to look real but is obviously not" to where there's hints that it looks like a real person, but it comes off more as a little terrifying to look at.  This is most obvious with characters like Barbossa, who looks absolutely horrendous.  I'm glad they at least made better progress in III, but it doesn't make II's version any less yikes...especially putting those "realistic renditions" next to Sora, Donald, and Goofy.




Pride Lands was probably one of my biggest disappointments in worlds when it came to just how generic looking it was.  It's a shame because Lion King is a great movie and there would have been so many places they could have picked from (as well as sequels).  But for some reason, they chose to pick the back half of the movie when the Pride Lands were basically a wasteland.  In the end it was basically one large empty field followed by generic looking canyons, a bland empty looking Pride Rock, and a surprisingly lovely looking spring (aka where Timon and Pumba hang out) that basically foreshadowed how gorgeous the Pride Lands would have been had they picked literally any other point in the movie to jump into.



On top of all of this, Kingdom Hearts II still suffers a bad case of Empty World syndrome.  Now, I didn't pick on this in Chain of Memories because it actually made sense in CoM.  The worlds you visited there were crafted from your memories, and was meant to have you basically relieve recrafted moments in those worlds...so having a bunch of NPCs in randomly generated (ie generated by your choice of cards) rooms outside of the story rooms would have made no sense.

Kingdom Hearts I, I could even give that an excuse because it was a big test for the game to see how people would like it.  Throwing in too many characters in a game you're not sure how people will receive it doesn't make much sense, and it could be argued that they were thinking about getting every other little factor right that they didn't think about the pointless random NPCs doing their day to day.

Kingdom Hearts II has neither of these excuses.  It was a big ambitious sequel, but it wasn't an experiment.  It also wasn't some simulation that Sora was going through (barring the Cyber world), so it baffled me why it just felt so incredibly empty.  Worlds were bigger because they had more areas to them, but the amount of people outside of Twilight Town was still very tiny...and even Twilight Town didn't have a huge amount for a large town (though at least it was somewhat populated compared to Traverse Town in KH1).

But that in itself is mainly a small gripe because while I love games that feel more alive and full of characters in the created world, I do get that there's more to a game than the random NPCs.

Oh, and the dead-eyed fish blub talking is still in this one.

Music

Okay, I mentioned in a previous review how I loved much of KH1's soundtrack.  But I also mentioned how a lot of the returning worlds, I loved their KH2 version even more.  This is because they took a lot of what was great music and refined it to sound even better...and the II.5/Final Mix version took that even farther.

I remember as much as I loved the normal KH2 soundtrack, I had some gripes such as how Port Royal's battle music was a really bland/generic version of the PotC theme music, and how I despised that Halloween Town's "This is Halloween" song carried over into Christmas Town.  I was really excited when I played II.5 Remix and learned that both of these issues (as well as basically all of the music) was fixed and touched up.  Now Port Royal's battle music sounded like the theme song in all of its glory, and Christmas Town had its own more "christmasy" type of music.  Not to mention, all of the redone tracks sounded even better despite some of them already sounding great to begin with.  I'll also mention that my gripe with Halloween/Christmas Town also extended to the outfit choice (since they wear halloween costumes in Halloween Town), but that was also thankfully fixed and they were given more "christmas" outfits.

But overall, music wise everything was still pretty spot on.  There was also a new recorded vocal piece called Sanctuary/Passions, which sounded just as lovely as Simple and Clean (especially the intro version).  Unfortunately, they'd be using these songs (as well as finally a new rendition of SaC for BBS 0.2) for every other KH release beyond this all the way up to III (which would introduce not one, but two new vocal pieces).

Sounds/Voices

I think I mentioned this in KH:CoM or the first review (I believe the former), but KH2 changed some of the sounds a bit for things such as leveling up, getting items, that usual thing.  I actually really liked much of the changes that made it into this game, as everything just overall sounds a lot nicer.  Magic spells, summon/companion sounds, every little sound just sounds nice and nothing really stood out as irritating to hear.

Voices...eh...well take heart that for the most part, voices are still great.  The main trio sounds excellent as always even with a now-teenager Sora, once again there's a lot of original VAs coming back and sounding excellent (I loved Pete's inclusion in the game mainly because I just love hearing him talk), and for the most part everyone did an exceptional job.

But there are misses...oh boy are there misses.

First off, Billy Zane didn't come back for Kingdom Hearts II, and boy is it noticeable at first.  Not only was his character revoiced in the game itself in which he rarely appears, but they even re-dubbed his lines in the flashback bits that show his character...and boy does it show.  The way the lines are said are almost completely different to an almost offputting degree, and it took me a long, long time to warm up to him in later games that he voiced.

Lance Bass didn't come back to voice Sephiroth in this game.  Sad, but nothing terrible there.  As an upside actually, Sephiroth's original voice actor from Advent Children and up voiced him and did great with what little he said.  Actually, all of the FF7 characters in this game had their original Advent Children VAs voicing them, and I mean all of them...all of them.

If you're wondering why I'm emphasizing it, I'll start off by saying that I have no issues with Mena Suvari, but she was an absolute poor choice for Aerith compared to Mandy Moore (KH1) and Andrea Bowen (Crisis Core).  She just has such an odd voice that sounds equally throaty and almost phoned in at points where it just sounds really off whenever she talks...whereas I was completely on board with Mandy Moore because when I imagine Aeris having a voice, Mandy Moore is exceptionally close (as was Andrea Bowen in Crisis Core and KH3).  It was just such a weird decision, especially since...once again, they redubbed Mandy Moore's original dialogue in one of the flashbacks, and my god does it show...I mean, yikes.

Some of the VAs playing the characters in Port Royal also sounded a bit off.  Jack Sparrow for instance sounds like a somewhat bad Johnny Depp impression instead of someone sounding like Johnny Depp...which is funny because A) It's James Arnold Taylor (aka the voice of Tidus from FFX and Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank) and he's usually a great voice actor, just not a great Johnny Depp impressionist...and B) They cast someone else for the voice in 3, and I had to actually look up to make sure it wasn't Johnny Depp because he was so much more spot on (but this one actually played the voice of Depp's characters in games prior to this).

Mushu was another one that bothered me because like my issue with Jack Sparrow, it was more of an "attempted" impression of Eddie Murphy instead of picking someone that actually sounded like (or actually picked) Eddie Murphy.

Outside of those, you can take solace in knowing that the appropriate VAs from the previous game came back for the most part, or the others sounded pretty great, and some of the original VAs for characters added in this game reprised their roles.  Christopher Lee did an excellent job as DiZ (which was unfortunate that he died and had to be re-voiced in later games since he did a phenomenal job).  Beast and Belle's original VAs came back, Sean Astin was dropped from voicing Hercules as they grabbed his original VA from the cartoon, Hades and Megara had their original VAs, Scrooge McDuck, the triplets, Tigger, Pooh, Piglet, Tron, Mufasa, Mrs. Potts, Pumbaa, Cogsworth, Rafiki, Owl, Minnie Mouse, Abu, and even the Wardrobe from Beauty and the Beast had their original/current VAs reprising the roles or had someone that was incredibly spot on.

The cast also introduced Crispin Freeman (Rude from Crisis Core) as Setzer (from Final Fantasy 6), Will Friedle (Eric from Boy Meets World) as Seifer (Final Fantasy 8), as well as Jesse McCartney (Roxas) and James Patrick Stewart (Xigbar)...which I was totally on board with.

So overall, there were big hits, smaller hits, and some misses in the voice cast.  Some more noticeable misses than the last game, but overall I thought the voice work was still pretty great in the long run.

Replayability
Like Kingdom Hearts I, this one had a lot going for it.  There's a lot of mini games, the colosseum, a super boss, item synthesis once again appears in a somewhat more annoying form (but it's the only way to get the best Keyblade again)...overall, there's a lot.  II.5 also added some extra bosses as well as a new area to explore to get to even more optional bosses, as well as new keyblades and recipes/items.   Like KH1, it also has a Secret Ending (with II.5 adding a second one) that you can access by hitting the requirements each difficulty has (with Proud/Critical basically being "Just beat the game" and the easier modes saying "100% Journal).  The higher modes are actually a little more punishing in this game than KH1, where it felt like Proud Mode got exceptionally easy fairly quick.   Optional superbosses are incredibly difficult (specifically the Lingering Will), and overall there's a lot going on.  Likewise, Gummi sections now have various missions with different rewards, so those are a bit more exciting overall as well.

On top of that, Kingdom Hearts 2 in general is a pretty easy game to make it through as far as playability goes.  It doesn't drag a lot, and there's no real exceptionally boring/annoying areas (just some little gripes here and there), so you might replay it a couple of times anyways just to enjoy everything.

Overall

In general, Kingdom Hearts II was a great and worthy sequel to I.  It took a lot of what the original game had and expanded on/improved it nicely.  While some aspects here and there with some of the worlds/voice acting was a little rocky with things either sounding off on occasion or the worlds feeling like they're rushing the story a bit (or put you in during a weird point in the movie time), it was nothing horribly offputting and they still felt like they had a reason for being there in the game...whereas the first game felt as if some were just put there because they were fan favorites.  There were even some surprise areas that aren't shown on the world map such as the "Past" world and the Cyber World, and they were definitely among my favorites of places to travel.  While there were some iffy areas (Atlantica, Pride Lands, Land of Dragons), overall I was still blown away with how exciting of a game this was.

But nothing, and I mean nothing could prepare me for the next game in the series, which I'll be reviewing on the 10th.

Until then, if you haven't already I highly recommend giving this game a try.  Then again, I'll be recommending playing through all of them so that you can understand the insanity of the story, but this is one I recommend fully just to experience it.