Kingdom Hearts 2

I freely admit, I never beat the first one. I got stuck in Hollow Bastion (from what I understand less than ten hours from the end) and after losing control of the PS2, gave up on trying.



So last week I bought 2.

The graphics? Very, very pretty. The music? Wonderful. The voice acting? Impeccable, superb, and done by most of the original actors!

The included Worlds?
Mulan, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hercules, Steamboat Willie, 100 Acre Wood... and a host of cameos and special appearances. With area-specific music! The battle music in Port Royal (PotC) is the PotC soundtrack!

The story?
Well, I will just say, the beginning of the story seems a little "huh?" because you don't actually meet Sora until almost 4 hours into the game. But it is explained at that point.

Better than the first? Definately. Quite a bit less linear.
The game's a bit more twitchy than the first, taking full advantage of what are called "reaction commands" - if a special command appears on your Command menu, you hit Triangle to do a unique move that will either save your ass or crush Heartless.
The summonses and Limit Breaks also require more twitchiness.

The Gummi ship is back, and it's better than before. No longer are you forced to endure the gummi routes to move from World to World; just the first time you want to travel to that new place.
Controls are similar; rapid fire is optional especially if you're using lock-on lasers.
You do earn the option, however, by opening additional missions, to go back through those Gummi routes and earn upgrades to your ships.
Destroyed enemies drop health and shield recharges, as well as medal orbs. Rare enemies, denoted by a yellow or red hull color, drop special Gummi upgrade blobs.

Each route has three missions. Each mission has 6 (or more) levels of rank completed.
The first is a "medal collection" mission, which you earn by collecting the orbs the bad guys drop when they blow up. The max is medal level 30. Level 30 will earn you an "S" rank.
The second is a kill-count mission. Each different gummi route has a different amount of required; for instance the first two you have available are 100/150/220/300/440/500 ? (I think, that's close) and you get the "S" rank for getting the max number of kills.
The third mission is unlocked after completing the first two missions with a C or better average rank. This is a high score mission. You -can- get higher than an "S" rank (I have a couple S+3 and an S+5). This mission varies from the other two because you need to control the camera angle as you fly, or you'll miss enemies or take damage from something you can't immediately see.
The only (currently visible) goal for repeating the Gummi routes is to upgrade your Gummi ship. You can earn additional building blocks, such as weapons, defense, engines, and hull upgrades, as well as pre-configured templates (Falcon, Highwind, Invincible), "satellite" Teeny ships, special paint sets, and almost a dozen "special" configurations. (Cactuar, Moogle, Highwind Alpha, to name a few)



There's very little I dislike about the game.
The cut-scenes can drag on. About 30 hours in you have to rescue Hollow Bastion from an invasion of Heartless... and it -will- take you 30-45 minutes to complete. I've heard that the final cut scene in Atlantica can take 30 minutes. You -can- skip them, however you lose a -lot- of story if you do.
I spent more than an hour trying to figure out the Atlantica mini-games. I'm not going to spoil it, however, I will say it's not rhythm based.
At first I was disappointed my time in some of the various worlds was too short - only an hour or so - but I ended up going back.


Very fun game. I hope I beat this one ;) I might even go back to finish KH1 if I get too lost in the story, heh.