A Well Thought-out Sequel to Kingdom Hearts
In Kingdom Hearts II, the story picks up after the end of the first title/the Game Boy Advance game Chain of Memories. The story is a complete continuation of the game released on the PS2 and the pseudo-sequel Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. So, please count this as a warning to new comers to the series, you will be lost to the main plot of the story for MOST of the game. I even had to go to Wikipedia to get a refresher on the main story highlights of the two games, especially for Chain of Memories because for the first four hours of the game, this is what you will be continuing the story from. After that, you will continue with the events of Sora, Donald and Goofy; the stars of the previous two games.
The game itself lives up to the long, high-quality history of Square/Enix games; brilliant colors, rich backgrounds and detailed characters. People who only know the Final Fantasy games might be a bit thrown off by the character designs, but they are modeled after a Disney-style person. This means characters tend to have big hands and feet and slightly disportionate head to body ratio. This may be somewhat sacrilegious to some, because this style has been applied to famous characters like Cloud from Final Fantasy VII or Tidus from Final Fantasy X. All in all, it does first the worlds/environments that you will be visiting in the game. Remember, this is a Disney-themed game, so you will go to a Lion King world and an Aladdin world to name a few.
For the readers who played the first game, combat is very similar in this game as in the last. For those new to the series, it is a basic hack-and-slash. You see an enemy, you lock-on with the R1 button and you mash away with the X button. You have some option to dodge with the Triangle button when the game hints toward you and you can parry/block with the Square button if you time it right. You have magic available to you with a sub-command activated with the L1 button, but you will mostly just be swinging your blade. Your two support characters (Donald and Goofy for most of the game, or a special world character for set levels) are 100% computer controlled. You can go into the menu and set the AI levels to tell them how often to do magic, but they are there to support Sora.
Overall, combat is nicely streamlined in the game over the last. The last PS2 game had a lot of camera angle issues where a wall is in the way right in the middle of a heated battle. Combat is also at a smoother control than before. It is easier to parry and dodge attacks than in the last game. The only downfall to these improvements is that it does make the game easier than the last. Granted, you can increase the difficulty settings from the start screen, but I am more attuned to having the ‘Standard’ level provide a decent challenge without resorting to the ‘Difficult’ setting the first time I play the game.
There is one aspect that I have to note about this title that is so hard to find in most games in this modern era, and that is the voice acting. It is so common to have game developers to get anyone cheap to dub lines for the main characters, especially for title imported directly from overseas. Since Disney is putting their name on the title, they opened their Rolodex and called up the actors who voice the characters from either the movie or television show the character is from. These are professional voice-over actors who know how to give a believable performance through the spoken word. Haley Joel Osment returns as Sora with Christopher Lee playing one of the antagonists to name a couple of people. Even the dialog is decent for most of the conversations throughout the game. The characters that tend to have the weakest lines are the Final Fantasy characters, but even the bad lines are better than so many other games I have played.
Between the visuals, the voice acting, the combat and the detailed story, this is a great title to add to any collection. It has over forty hours of main-story game play, so this is pretty much not a rent title. If you want to do some of the side quests and leveling up of the characters, you can easily tack on another ten hours of play. It was worth the wait.