Kingdom Hearts II was a good follow up.
Don't let my review fool you, I did enjoy Kingdom Hearts II, but there was to much about it that annoyed me. They tried to make the game more complex, in the end it was still a button masher. The story was interesting, but it was completely slowed down by all the side worlds. The game was shorter than the first and not even as fun. I rarely had to use magic and I didn't even use a Summon once. The first game just had more charm overall and better boss battles.
----------Battle System----------
Kingdom Hearts II is a 3rd person Action RPG. There really isn't much of a difference between the two games, so I'll try to point them out in this review. The biggest difference in the game is the addition of a "Reaction" button, which is always the Triangle button. This Reaction button can be used during battle to change the tide of the fight, mostly used against boss fights. The Reaction will pop up during certain points of a battle. Some Reactions will happen if you get close to an enemy (usually the normal level enemies). Say you get close to a Nobody and click the Triangle button when it pops up, you will get a reversal move on it and can strike it from behind. While this Reaction is pretty useful against normal enemies, it just slows down the boss fights and removes all levels of strategy for me. It doesn't take skill or brain power to hit a button when it pops up, atleast in the other Kingdom Hearts the boss battles were interesting. There was a couple good ones on this one (my favorite was the Dragon the 2nd time through Mulan's stage) but the game was seriously lacking.
One thing that annoyed me was that Munny was really hard to gather. They balanced this with the lack of decent things to buy though, there's more shops in this game than there was the first, but alot less items to buy and get excited for.
There's also a Form mode in this game. The Form mode is a when Sora can be joined by Goofy or Donald to form one person, this increases Soras status effects for a short amount of time. The Form mode can be used during anytime in battle when you have your "gauge" full. You fill your guage when enemies drop form pellets after you kill them. These pellets look similar to Mummy but they're kinda highlighted.
Another similar mode is Limit breaks. You can use these in battle when your MP is maxed out with the Triangle button. The Limit will team you up with any character that has a Limit break to form a short blast of combo moves.
There's no team abilities in this one. You don't learn stuff like Glide and such. This was completely disappointing. There’s no Trinity limits either, this gives you no reason to backtrack. I enjoyed backtracking in the first one since you can level up really easily, but I never had to backtrack in this game. The Jiminy's Journal is a huge improvement though, he tracks just about everything in the game including each and every treasure. Treasures on the other hand are always in plain view, and easy to find. They also rarely contain anything worth getting.
You don't exclusively team up with Disney characters in this one, so that’s a good thing. You'll occasionally be joined by Final Fantasy characters in some spots, and even Riku. This is one of the better things about the game.
----------Characters / Story----------
The story picks up where the first Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories left off. The story is alot more complex than the first game, but it takes a while for it to get interesting. The first 3 hours or so you spend with Roxas is important to the plot, then nothing happens for 20 hours and then the game finally picks up when they met up with the King. Each level you visit have their own little storylines that rarely tie into the main plot. That's the one thing that bugged me was there was no purpose to travel to each land, and each time they ALWAYS run into Pete. The only reason I think was given was "because a new path opened" or "we're looking for Riku and Kairi".. blah. In the first game he was searching for each keyhole and saving the princess', THAT is a purpose.
The storyline between each levels are to similar to their movie counterparts. The dialog is even cheesier in this game than the last too. So much about this game was contrived. The Final Fantasy characters are spread across 3 worlds this time around, but they still take a backseat when it comes to the Disney stuff.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics are a slight improvement, in a flashy way, but not in the level design area. The areas in the game are about twice the size as the ones in the original, but that's its downfall, there's just alot of empty space and a dull level design. Nothing about the levels show any real character like the ones did in the first game. While the level areas were larger, the actual full blown levels seemed shorter. I blew by each level in the game in about 30 minutes, not counting cutscenes. You eventually got back to each level for a second time, but it's even shorter than your first visit.
The cutscenes are roughly the same as before in a real-time game engine mixed with pre-rendered cutscenes for the start and end of the game. They're longer but since the story was slow until the end of the game I felt bored with it. There was to many repeating levels from the first game. While they're all completely changed or added upon it still felt a little cheap.
----------Sound----------
Cid sounds like an elderly old man (and looks like it), Aerith's voice is grating, and Vivi's voice is the worst of them all. The music is roughly the same as the last game. Other than these complaints, everything in the sound department is solid enough.
----------World Map----------
The world map is a huge improvement over the last game. After Sora locks a keyhole, a new path opens to another world, sometimes two different worlds. To reach the new worlds they have to fly their Gummi Ship through more astreal plans. The traveling is a huge graphical bump, but the gameplay is alot less Star Fox and more railshooter. It trys to be big and flashy but it's still just as easy as before. After you unlock the road you can travel between worlds without ever worrying about doing it again. You can actually play all the Gummi levels that are available in a row so you won't have to worry about them later. That's what I did when there was more than one up at a time. Once that's all clear you can travel to the new world in real time, no more dot-to-dot mess anymore.
----------Time to Complete Game (first run through, last save before final boss)----------
30:02
