Kingdom Hearts II is a good sequel but holding out too long to play it may have affected my opinion of it.
First off, the worlds: Some are new but most are returning from the first game with new areas. You will also visit these worlds at least twice during the game. I enjoyed travelling to the new worlds for the first time especially the oones based on mulan and the lion king. This brought the freshest experience to the game in my opinion. however, it is short-lived , I feel that you spend a lot less time in the worlds in the second game than the first. maybe I just don't remember how long they were back then but the levels in 2 seemed to fit about the length of the levels in birth by seep. They were fine for a portable title but I felt that 2 should have had console length levels. Perhaps to remedy this, you have to go back to each world a second time. Personally, i thought that the storylines in most worlds were bland and didn't really care about the disney characters that I grew up watching. I don't know maybe they should have went the bbs route aand focused more on the villains in each world. The mini games that each world seem to have at least one of were also not all that fun and if anything were tedious.
Second, gameplay: I'm just gonna say it the combat in kingdom hearts 2 compared to birth by sleep is clunky. Sora's combos seem really slow. And I had a major problem with his block/guard at first. For some reason , he does a half-turn to block rather than just straight up guarding. It made one of the first boss battles in mulan's world hard to beat. The ability system here is like the first game's. you select abilities that take up a character's AP. Now, it's probably just me here but I couldn't figure out how many of the abilities worked, especially the physical ones. Only a few of them tell you how to pull them off while the others just describe what they do. For example, I had dodge slash equipped for half the game before I realized that I had never used and didn't even know how. I also used magic failry little this time around. because it didn't seem to ever do much damage to enemies. The cure magic also takes up your whole mp bar which recharges pretty slowly. The new drive forms are also supposed to add to the combat of the game but I alsouse it fairly little. I think the end game screen said I only used them like 8 times. I always felt like i should save it for something important but many time that time never cames. On the plus side, the reaction commands are fun to use and offer cinematic scenes at time that can be fun to watch. Finally, the gummi ship sequences. I didn't like these in the first game but here I thought they were handled a lot better. Still, I would rather not be forced to play them and did not miss them in birth by sleep.
Third, story: I was expecting to be blown away by this game's story. I am a huge fan of this series . I think the story and characters are great. But having played birth by sleep and even reading a small amount of chain of memories and 358/2 days toook away from the impact of this games story. Although i had avoided major plot points of the game I have heard oevr the years about roxas and namine being sora and kairi's nobodies. And other than those things, If i guessed the basic storyline of this game I would have been right. The game wasn't boring but nothing really blew me away. Not even the boss battles. The hardest boss battle comes about 65% through the game and from there they are all surprisingly easy, even the last one.
I guess this review makes it seem like I didn't like the game this much but i'm really only pointing out the negaives i saw in it from playing newer installments and waiting so llong to play it. I really do like this series but I hope that kingdom Hearts 3 takes more from birth by sleep than from this one. It has better combat, the magic is more useful, and fewer mini games. Still Kingdom Hearts 2 is a game that any kingdom hearts fan should (and probably has) play .