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Rating: 
-
What a game- let me tell you. There are some great parts from the original one they included; unique bosses, awesome new weapons, a great storyline. Though were there are some great parts there must be bad.
Kingdom Hearts II was a blast, I loved battling enemy after enemy, the tiny stars that flash up when you attack something with your keyblade reassured me of that. Let me tell you though the beginning started off very slow and confusing. Let me tell you now if you haven't beaten Kingdom Hearts 1 you'll probably be scratching your head the whole game.
You first start off as Roxas, a boy who is suddenly plunged into the Kingdom Hearts storyline. Similar to Kingdom Heart's first part of the game, I can honestly say(and I'm sure many would agree with me) that is was extremely boring and slow. Agh chore after chore, job after job. I hated collecting all that money, preforming stupid tricks on some skateboard that you couldn't skip! The only thing that really struck my attention in that part were the dreams Roxas had- It got me interested in the mysterious, devolping storyline yet to come. Well you can't blame Enix I suppose, I guess they were only trying to build up to the juicy parts.
Oh yes the juicy parts, chopping and slicing every enemy I see with my trusty keyblade- classic Kingdom Hearts. The "ultima" keyblade has returned, just as hard to make, just as powerful, and just as awesome looking. Saving world after world, it was very entertaining how different and unique each world was.
Although I was not use to the whole new gummi ship system, I grew to like it and now I realize it was a ton better than the first one. The trips where you battle hoards of flying enemies might be a little slow and easy at first, but trust me it really starts heating up when you get to the harder worlds. They now have a new boss system, where a boss might randomly attack you in battle. These guys are toughies if you don't have the right equipment, and I think Enix really tried to encourage that. Not only that, you can now travel to the same trips but on a different difficulty level. Rewards for completion include rare gummi peices. Perfect Enix, perfect.
One of my favorite parts were the drive powers. The game so totally needed this. Sora now has the power to weild TWO keyblades at once. That's right... you heard me, two! There are four drive powers that you can activate with a new drive bar similar the magic bar. Already the first power given to you early in the game allows Sora to weild two keyblades. I won't go over the next two, but the last one is a whopper! The final form, as Enix named it is just awesome. Sora's clothes turn totally silver and black, two keyblades hover(that's right hover!) around his hands, he hovers around in midair, and to top it all off when you attack you do insane damage, along with special moves you couldn't do with regular attacks. I would have to say this was one of the most enjoyable parts of this wonderful game.
I'm sorry to say though that the game was really quite easy. Now if I recall correctly one of the fairy people in the beginning mentioned something like "This adventure is going to be twice as difficult!". Man I was all prepared for this great journey, but at the end when I beat it I felt a sence of dispair. I felt as if I had just pressed the "x" button over and over, as a previous customer mentioned. Bosses that use to take quite a long time to kill can now be killed in less than a minute, and you don't even have to be a high combat level. When I defeated bosses in the first one, I felt a sence of accomplishment, but now I don't when the bosses kneel before me in KH2.
Overall- I like to say congratulations Square Enix for once again creating a great game.
Rating: -
A note on my ratings and preferences:
I have never been able to come close to giving a game 5 stars. There are just way too many ways for a game to go wrong. I am not opposed, indeed I dream of encountering a 5 star game. It has just never happened as it has with movies or books. 5 stars would mean it was a work of art. 4 stars mean it was a truly excellent game that I highly recommend, but it will still have problems. 3 stars is mainly positive but with notable problems-worth trying depending on your preferences. 2 stars are seriously problematic and not recommended.
I prefer storyline and character in a game. I am not terribly good at games and have a very low frustration level and so like the difficulty on the easy side, however, I will fight through difficult play if I really like the game. I read complaints sometimes about games being too short, but I have yet to find one that was too short and rarely finish the games I play.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is a very well made game that just barely squeaked by with 4 stars due to its charm, graphics and accessibility. I will rate on these categories:
Difficulty: excellent! Well, mostly. I read so much about how easy this game was that I chose the moderate difficulty (there were 3 choices I think). a couple of timed fights (yuck), boss fights, and annoying enemies made me regret this, but that is my fault presumably and even so the vast majority of the time the game is quite manageable on moderate, and grinding can help some if you're behind the curve. Naturally the game designers get full marks for having difficulty levels- one of the most important things to me in a game.
Graphics: very very nice, varied and pretty environments, nice looking characters and, in one thing I really was impressed by, some of the environments were very different than others-like a different graphic style altogether, you'll see. you are close in with your character- kind of in the environment (towards the kotor, oblivion side of things and away from the more god view like distance of ffx or shadow hearts which makes me feel like I'm exploring a map, not an environment). my one small complaint would be the smaller size of the environments- a lot of worlds have very little to explore, but fairly said, compared to other ps2 games, kh2 is pretty far above avg. here.
Storyline: okay, I didn't play kh1! This made the plot starting off pretty confusing and actually a bit strange. Nevertheless it was sort of a moody and sweet and very low key story about some kids on summer vacation. I liked it! The story was told via a mix of nicely done cut scenes and click through talk bubble dialogue. They sort of drop the tenor and quality of this storyline after maybe 5 hours (a wild guess) and then the game becomes a lot of mini versions of Disney movies- like little short story redoes of Disney Films within the overarching game story. I mean, I guess playing all these Disney locales and stories is the heart of the game, but it made for a lot to put together into a story, and, fairly speaking on the story side of it, if it were a movie or book, it doesn't work. For a game it is good enough. I would give the storyline a modest thumbs up, enough to keep me going for awhile. How it wraps up I cannot speak to as I only made it approx. half way through.
Game play: there is talking (with, sadly, no dialogue choices), walking around, making it to good quality cut scenes and watching them, a scattering of mini-games, modest character management, and fighting fighting fighting fighting. I found the character development and stat tracking Byzantine in a way that disguises that there is not much to it (this is common in ps2 rpgs), making items, armor/weapon equipping and skills are all okay, but underdeveloped. The fighting has some similar problems. It's complex in a way, but ends up being very situational and though there may be 11 things you can do often it just means you can do one of them by hitting triangle. And usually it seems best to just hit attack until the screen tells you to do something else, which is fairly often. I found the gameplay mixed.
Conclusion: Kingdom Hearts 2 was a somewhat charming, somewhat overwrought AAA game that tailors to any ability (unless the hard difficulty is too easy for some). It is among the best for the PS2, but not so good that I didn't get tired of it long before the end.
Rating: 
-
I liked this game a lot. It has a wonderful storyline, but even on expert mode it is just too easy to beat. I don't think that the in-game combat is as good as the first one. It does end the story, and that's about it. Not much going on in this one. There are more worlds and new characters, but not one of my favorite games.
Rating: -
I was really looking forward to this game as i loved the first kh but i got bored of that because iv'e played it so many times before.
Although i did enjoy this game i found it really easy and too simple. I completed it very quickly and i didn't get a thrill out of it. It was shorter than kh1 and it got pretty boring at times.
If your'e going to get this game, please don't get your'e hopes up..its not ground breaking at all.
Rating: 
-
I could play Kingdom Hearts I, over and over but, Kindom Hearts II is too boring! There is too much talking and not enough action. I am too disappointed in this game because of the high standard that Kingdom Hearts I set.
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