mould

REVIEW: Kingdom Hearts 2 (SPOILER)
You're lucky. Looks like my summer vacation is...over. (Roxas, to sleeping Sora)

One of the best lines I've encountered so far, I think, especially given (or because of) the context. KH2 starts off with you playing this quite cool guy called Roxas. Memories from the first game are constantly thrown in, suggesting a link between Sora and Roxas. Then at the end of the first part, Roxas finds Sora and it's revealed that he is Sora's Nobody. An organisation called Organisation 13 or XIII is trying to control Kingdom Hearts so they can regain their hearts. They're composed of 13 very strong Nobodies, which are the husks left behind when a Heartless is formed from a strong personality. So they go around activating the Heartless, which Sora has to kill; when he does, the Hearts are sent into Kingdom Hearts, furthering the organisation's plan. Aided by Goofy and Donald and his allies from various worlds, as well as King Mickey himself, Sora must stop the Heartless (with Maleficient returning to mastermind things) and Xehanort, leader of the organisation at the same time.

The gameplay is very smooth so much so that making Sora go around skateboarding, jumping, fighting, or basically doing anything is a pleasure in itself. Some features I found particularly enjoyable include the drive system, which has you putting on different action clothes and doing more action stuff in battle and the command button where you can perform enemy-specific moves with the triangle.

The graphics are not bad and the character design for Sora and Kairi are especially nice (Kairi is damn hot!!!!!). I liked Hollow Bastion and Twilight Town very much, especially the music for Twilight Town. I was also very amused by the costumes in Timeless River and Pridelands. 100-Acre Wood, like Yinwei said, is a sure winner - you can't go wrong with that idea. Pooh sounded a little weird though...

The mini-games (like poster duty and skateboarding) are not bad as well, though some get rather tedious. The Hades Cup Jiminy journal completion thing comes to mind. Celes was very disparaging about it, but he's disparaging about most things he personally doesn't like anyway, so that's not important. But I was affected by it and so I ended up not going for total completion - if you complete the journal, you can watch a hidden KH3 trailer, but you can find it on youtube.com anyway. So I left out the 2 or 3 of the Paradox Cups and the synthesis completion part (getting 20, 25 and 30 of the respective materials). Sianz. I realise that I'm quite obsessive sometimes - for example in KH1 I basically did everything except the gummi ship stuff. Recently (being in 2004) when I played Digital Devil Saga I killed every single boss (I think? No - I left out one, the crazy one from a previous game in the underground part of the Brutes' base) and killed that weird rare random encounter enemy as well.

But anyway, KH2 is okay, which to me is a disappointing result for a game with such potential. First, the very concept of a Disney/Square combo was revolutionary with the first game and it was handled well enough that it was a huge success. It was fun and light-hearted (as can be seen from the weapon, which is a giant key that unlocks locked hearts) - not to be taken too seriously, but with sufficient depth to it to make it nice as well. Sora's defiant "I now know that Kingdom Hearts - is Light!" is quite impressive, though in all the usual RPG cliche ways. But 2 took a somewhat lazy approach and stuck to the same formula - a few worlds like Pirates of the Carribean and Mulan were added, but the basic premise remained the same.

In fact, for most of the game you're fighting Heartless, and the same Heartless from KH1, again! This I feel is a big big waste. I found the concept of the Nobodies very very cool - husks that are desperate to regain their hearts, beings created without feeling, without humanity but for their memories and through no fault of their own. There is an element of the tragic that could have been elaborated much more (as was done with Axel and Roxas quite nicely). Small issues like why the top 13 Nobodies have even stronger personalities than the normal Nobodies could have been dealt with easily, making for great potential. Instead the final villain, Xehanort or Xemnas or whoever looked to me very flat, with no coherent purpose, no character, no nothing. Nobody. This carried over into the plot. Final battles are quite important to any game, for rather self-evident reasons, but I really didn't know why I wanted to defeat Xehanort at all.

I think the compare and contrast with Suikoden is quite obvious by now. Suikoden had horrible loading time, no way of skipping scenes that had been watched on a previous load, a clumsy engine for the army battles etc etc. There were a lot of small little details that detracted from the gaming experience. But it worked hard at the characters and the basic plot, so that in the end I felt about as good about it as I did KH2. I think that's quite sad, cos then it's just KH1.5...not like the Final Fantasy games, where each one breaks new ground. KH2 had a very let's take something good and keep it that way feeling to it. But obviously this whole thing sounds a little full of shit - it's just a game, why am I taking it so seriously etc etc. Well it's just that I had high expectations I suppose, after the first game and because of the sheer potential. It's a waste, that's all. Otherwise it was a very very fun game, but nothing that worth remembering for a long time.

In the end, I think I liked Roxas and KAIRI!!!!! Axel was a bit gay but like I said the concept of Org. 13 is cool anyway. Ansem was a bit sianz, though the start, where Mickey appears in the Org 13 raincoat is cool. I liked the Twilight Town guys too. Hades was a very cool villain - some of his lines were memorable: "What is so funny, you imbeciles! How dare you get a happy ending! How DARE you!" Wish we could have seen more Square and Disney characters - maybe those from earlier FFs? FFT? Xenogears or other Square games? Though serious copyright issues were probably at stake. Pirates was a good touch for Disney, as was Timeless River. I think what would have been DAMN cool would have been fighting the Nobodies of Disney heroes. Oh man...like Hercules Nobody and Simba Nobody and stuff. So cool. But alas.

K, a bit of trivia. The cast includes Haley Joel Osment as the voice of Sora, Christopher Lee as Ansem, Mena Suvari (American Beauty) as Aeris and Rachel Leigh Cook (She's All That) as TIFA MY FAVOURITE RPG FEMALE CHARACTER EVER. I think. Yeah, should be her. Maybe Terra or Celes are second, or Calamity Jane or Emeralda from Xeno but Tifa is clearly first for me. Tara Strong is Rikku again (from FFX2). Uhm... can't think of anything else.

Yeah that's it. Never mind, I'm sure KH3 will roxx. I'm looking forward to it already.