Kingdom Hearts II (PS2) 8/10

[Renzocooking]

Console(s):
PlayStation 2.

Story (8/10):
Darkness will never take over our hearts.
Get ready to join the greatest heros in their epic battle against the evil Heartless.
Along with Sora, Donald and Goofy, travel to the amazing Disney worlds of The Lion King, Beauty and the Best, Tron and many more to fight the darkness that plagues them.

And the box doesn't lie. You travel from world to world, beating heartless into a slow painful death by use of a dull key. Except...that's not our the story truly begins.

You begin as a young boy named Roxas who is living in a bright town named Twilight Town with his friends Hayner, Pence and Olette. Some real strange things are happening to him.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW. ;D





He's having these weird dreams about some guy named Sora. And then he meets a young girl who claims she wanted to meet him at least once. The next thing he knows there's this mysterious weapon stalking him...the Keyblade.

The storyline is interesting. But the beginning part, Roxas' story, can drag out for a good four to six hours. When the real story begins, the game seems like it's over quicker than when it begun.

Spoilers end here.

Controls (9/10):
One word - DECENT CAMERA CONTROL. How long have we been praying for a Kingdom Hearts game in which you control the camera? No more mashing the R2 button for the camera to move a little to the right. Using the right analog stick moves the camera around in a swift, easy movement.

You lead the character around the field map with the left analog stick. There's a command menu for all sorts of things accessible in the bottom left corner of the screen. This is controlled with the arrow buttons. To switch to the secondary command menu, just press the left arrow key button and it switches over.

Pressing the L1 button brings up the short cut menu which you can customise by use of the Main Menu. The main menu is accessed by pressing pause when not in battle.

Sometimes, you can press triangle for a Reaction command. A Reaction Command could be opening a treasure chest or a special attack.

Graphics (8/10):
The graphics are very cartoonish. For the majority of cutscenes, the speakers mouth moves with the words they are speaking.

The characters movements sets are close to being perfect. No more slow-Tidus walk. You've got characters who can actually do a fairly fast run...even walking is slightly fast.

The in-battle Reaction Commands are purdy and full of epicness. Watching a fifteen year old boy destroying a massive creature in one hit? Epic.

Sound/Music (7/10):
The theme tune is sung by Utada Hikaru. Sanctuary is a beautiful song, much better than the original Kingdom Heart's Simple and Clean. The ending version - Sanctuary: After The Battle - mixes with the slightly sad element of the actual game.

The ingame music though is okay. It's not 100% perfect and some of it can get slightly annoying after a few times listening to it.

The voice actors for this game aren't exactly the best choice. Haley Joel Osment voices the main character, Sora. Jessie McCartney voices Roxas. Hayden Panettiere was one of the worst in my opinion. She tried to hard to make Kairi sound all dramatic and...failed.

James Arnold Taylor has a little role as well. As if we didn't get fed up with him during Final Fantasy X. -shudder-

Replayability (7/10):
This game is fairly easy, so it's possible to complete everything in your first playthrough. This includes getting the secret ending unless you are playing on Easy mode...in which case you should probably be strangled for making an easy game even easier. D<

To be honest, the game isn't worth replaying unless you include some sort of challenge. Yes, it hasn't got FFX's spheregrid or KH's overpowered Keyblades, but there are many you could do.

Online/Multiplayer (if any) (#/10):
Not online or multiplayer.

Game-play (8/10):
This is the type of game in which it's few steps foward, cutscene, battle, move to another world...few steps foward, drama, cutscene, battle.

The battle field is difficult to describe. It's also set on the field map? =X I fail at explaining things, apologies for that.

You can only directly control one of the characters. The others are better described as "Hey, you, heal me!". They don't do much, but take damage for you and heal you when you get low on hitpoints.

Your method of transport between worlds are gummi-ships. Slightly frustrating little things that fire lasers when you hit X while in a mission. You only have to travel through each mission once, luckily.

Overall Score (8/10):
This game is certainly worth buying. It's not necessary for you to play or complete Kingdom Hearts or Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories first, the events in those games are shown to you in the first couple of hours.

It'd be better to buy this game then rent it. This game can take over 100 hours if you do everything 100%.

[Demon Spork]

Replay was what really gets me on KH I and II. Once you've played it, you've played it, and even if you haven't completed some goal, etc, there's really no motivation to complete it.

[Renzocooking]

Edited:
Read my below post.

[aaronf101]

^^
This is my favorite game of all time. I have over 70 hours of game play.

Honestly this game has so much replay value that if the thought of ever buying it crosses your mind, you should immediately go to the game store and buy it. Sure, Renzocooking , it can get a bit boring at time leveling up all your glide to max to be able to beat the last boss or septh in KH2 but it's so worth it. Kicking Xemnas's ass over and over is priceless.

[Renzocooking]

The game only has replay value if you make it difficult. ;)
Swap Magic + Level 1 Critical + Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+ = EPIC.
Or...if you can't get any of those...
Proud Mode + Low Level Challenge, no drives or limits or healing items = EPIC.
Playing through the game with no challenge after your first time is just...boring.
I need to edit my first post to include that -didn't think.-

[RobbyTheReaper]

kingdom hearts is the shit i give it a 10/10 can't wait to try the new ones for the ds and psp

[Ocean]

It's a great game. I played it two years ago, although I can't really remember much about it. But it was great. I do remember the storyline was incredible. I liked the first one more, though.

[Renzocooking]

I, personally don't feel it's worth a 10/10. xD
It does have its flaws, but it's a matter of opinion.

I didn't really like the original Kingdom Hearts. Well, not the beginning part of it anyway. It got some what exciting towards the end for me, but apart from that, I really disliked it.

[.Oath]

Ah, kingdom hearts II. One of the best games created [IMO]
Gameplay got much more funner then the first.

[Aether]

I love this game, 10/10 forever.

Pretty nice the second time around.